America’s Got Talent Finalist – Jeremy Vanschoonhoven

Jeremy was a surprisingly interesting interview. Obviously I needed to find out how he learned his talent. Hopefully I captured his story properly below.

Jeremy Vanschoonhoven learned about trail riding at a local bike shop when he was getting ready to go mountain biking. He found a guy who popped up on his back wheel and started hopping around on it. Jeremy knew then that he had to learn how to do that. So, he went home and for 3 hours started learning how to do it.

Jeremy has actually won a number of national titles on his bike and even gone to the world championships for it, but he admitted that there’s just no money in the sport right now. So, at the end of the year he’d end up spending more on the competitions than he made. He’d make in the hundreds of dollars at competitions.

Jeremy also said he has to build the sets himself and pay for them himself which was news to me. The last set he used was being built until right before they had to take it apart and ship it. He only got to ride on it one time before it shipped. Then, his bags and bike got lost by the airlines and so he couldn’t practice with the bike since he had no bike. The table and benches were in LA already while he waited for the rest the mountain set, but when he was practicing on the table it broke the wood and so he couldn’t practice on that anymore either. The fall they showed us on America’s Got Talent was the first time he’d had a chance to try out the full set. It was the worst fall he’s ever had and was the first time he’s had to go to the emergency room for a fall.

Jeremy noted that normally he’d have practiced the act 100 times, but in this case he’d had very little time to practice his act before the show, so that made him really nervous.

Jeremy said he feels very comfortable on his bike. Now he just needs to work more on the performance aspect of the show. He plans to increase the performance aspect while still incorporating the danger aspect as well.

I found Jeremy’s background and experience fascinating. It makes me want to go and check out videos of Jeremy and others at the national and world championships.