The world may have lost its most fabulous hooligan last January, but Ken Block’s inspiration will live on forever, as celebrated in this new video from up and coming Spanish FIM Enduro Team Honda rider Kirian Mirabet. 

The short film “Gymkhana38: The Step” is a direct tribute to Ken Block’s Gymkhana series of viral stunt videos, each showing the famous rally pro driver ripping up a new, usually famous location (think cities like San Francisco and sights like Route 66) in a race prepped vehicle. 

Well, 28-year-old Kirian decided to create his own version of Block’s Gymkhana mayhem, riding his 2022 Africa Twin AS through the city of El Paso (The Step), on La Palma, one of Spain’s Canary Islands. And we’re here for it.

Kirian is no stranger to stunting on adventure bikes. We’ve seen videos of him riding ice and surfing dunes with the Africa Twin, and even backflipping the big Honda — with luggage — into a massive foam pit. Gymkhana, a term loaned from equestrian eventing that involves skillful speed and obstacle challenges, seems to come naturally to the gifted rider, as evidenced by the impressive way he pilots the 230kg Honda in this video.

It all unfolds high on Cumbre Vieja, an extinct volcano on the Island of La Palma. After a slow, scenic drone shot of the mountain, backed by a brief, stirring rendition of “Amazing Grace,” the party starts with Kirian blasting off on the Africa Twin, roosting and wheeling toward the luckily suspecting town El Paso.

There’s a skate park scene where Kirian scrapes off some knobs, followed by some somewhat controlled slides around a traffic circle, which is the first time we start to feel worried for the AT’s stock Showa fork as it works overtime to regulate the brut energy caught between hard throttle and locked braking.

El Paso, Spain, seems like a quiet town to visit, unless it’s the day Kirian is screaming around, blowing up table skirts at outdoor cafes and wheeling through intersections. The bike looks fairly stock, though it is heavily cloaked in crash bars and a skid plate from Outback Motortek. Kirian tells ADV Pulse he’s also added an MIVV exhaust, Talon wheels and Galfer discs. The helmet is LSA with custom graphics, com unit is Cardo and the knobbies are from Mitas. 

When we arrive at some concrete steps the background music slows to let us know something crazy is brewing, and yep, sure enough, he rides up the series of interspersed flights. But does he ride down? Heck no. Kirian literally flies off the top of one flight and lands sixteen steps below on the Africa Twin, a bike considered far too heavy for such use, yet somehow the Spaniard makes it look like no big deal.   

Gymkhana38 (38 is Kirian’s plate number) isn’t a long film, but it’s a nice hit of adventure bike porn to add some heat to our spring riding fever. It’s also a cool way to pay tribute to motosports legend Ken Block, and maybe prompt us all to revisit the ten insane Gymkhana videos Block gifted the world in the twenty-tens.

Block, who died in a snowmobile accident in January, will forever represent the unruly inner child that lives in us all. And no doubt, he’d give Kirian a pat on the back for entertaining us with this tribute video. 

Author: Jamie Elvidge

Jamie has been a motorcycle journalist for more than 30 years, testing the entire range of bikes for the major print magazines and specializing in adventure-travel related stories. To date she’s written and supplied photography for articles describing what it’s like to ride in all 50 states and 43 foreign countries, receiving two Lowell Thomas Society of American Travel Writer’s Awards along the way. Her most-challenging adventure yet has been riding in the 2018 GS Trophy in Mongolia as Team AusAmerica’s embedded journalist.