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No other bike race in the world is approached by a long hike through the desert, scrambling over rocks and cliffs, following a treacherously narrow path along slick, dusty trails, climbing higher and higher into the desert mountains for a glimpse of the action. But Red Bull Rampage is no ordinary bike race.
“It’s the Olympics, it’s the Super Bowl, it’s whatever you want to call it of mountain biking,” says American rider Luke Whitlock. “This is the ultimate proving ground. To even get to the bottom at Rampage is an incredible feat.”
Since 2001 the world’s best male freeriders – freestyle mountain bikers – have descended on this corner of southern Utah for one of the world’s most dangerous races. From last year the world’s best women have joined them, with both sets of competitors not only designing their route down the red rock face, but carving their lines into the mountain itself by hand alongside a team of diggers. No power tools are allowed: this is a labour of love.
The course is a sprawling section of southwest Utah’s deep red sandstone cliffs, with drops, steps, and steep walls to surmount as they make their way down to the finish corral. Every year the riders look at that blank slate and envision how they’ll paint their own stamp on one of the most incredible, and formidable, landscapes sport has to offer.
“Each mountain has its own personality,” says Katie Holden, a former rider and co-founder of Red Bull Formation, a progression event for female riders. Athletes approach the landscape in different ways, some going big on tricks and stunts, while others incorporate more technical descending among the jagged lines carved into the ridgeline.
They have the choice to do one or two runs, which are judged on their degree of difficulty, tricks and style, execution, fluidity and control, and amplitude – essentially how big they go and how much they commit to their stunts.
It’s not one for the faint-hearted. In other sports a small misstep can mean a points deduction. Here it can cause a life- or career-threatening injury.
“That line choice can have a huge result on the scoring,” explains Hannah Bergemann, a bubbly American who finishes second on her Rampage debut, a year after an Achilles injury ruled her out just six weeks before. “You have to be super strategic about your line choice, taking risks, you’re doing all the physical labour to build your lines. It’s such a physical and mental battle. There’s no event like it.”
As a spectator, too, there’s no event like it. From the moment the first rider drops in – 23-year-old Canadian Kirsten van Horne – it’s heart-in-mouth stuff as the athletes flip, jump and soar down 40- to 50-foot drops in search of sporting immortality.
Torrential rain earlier in the week forces the event back by a day as the diggers and riders wait for the deep red soil to dry out and the lines to be rideable again. It’s an additional day for the adrenaline to mount, with both the men and women given a day of practice straight before dropping in.
The riders practice their runs in small segments, building up speed and checking their position; many will only complete the run in full in the final itself. Bergemann is one of those to not combine all of her tricks until the day of the competition, which she admits is “pretty insane”. “You kind of just block it out, all the preparation that has gone into it makes it so you don’t get nervous,” she explains.
On the day of the women’s competition, the opening event, we take a long, slow route criss-crossing the desert plain, the road etched into peaks and hollows in the red clay. In the distance are the two drop-ins, tall and imposing over the sheer cliffs of rock.
It’s a bustling scene already despite the early hour as the sun slowly climbs beyond the ridge line: Green Day and Fleetwood Mac blaring, fans crawling over boulders to set up camp, eyeing up the best spots. By the end of the day everyone, participant and spectator alike, is coated in a layer of red dust – most with a hidden layer of sunburn underneath from the baking desert heat.
The women’s event is still in its infancy, but it’s immediately obvious how much of a step up has been made since the inaugural race. Only seven riders compete from 13 invitees, the others withdrawing either through injury or simply because they can’t fully commit to their daredevil runs.
Even the names of tricks are hair-raising: suicide no-handers, heel-click backflips, cork 720s. The course is peppered with features like the Battleship – a huge rock formation with a sharp drop either side – El Presidente, a 54-foot drop, and Princess Killer, which put paid to American Casey Brown’s chances after she crashed in practice and was airlifted to hospital.
Less than two-tenths of a point separates the top two women by the end, with New Zealander Robin Goomes defending her title from Bergemann with a slick, assured run. “Every single rider on the hill today levelled up so much from last year,” Goomes says. “We’re on a pretty steep upward trajectory so it’s going to be cool seeing what the next years bring.” This year is the first with an all-female panel judging the women’s race as the sport – a heavily macho one – makes small steps towards equality.
The men’s competition has a different atmosphere; it’s a bigger event, with a much longer history and more established fanbase, and the stunts are a further level up. But while every female rider nailed her line, we’re reminded on Sunday just how much is at stake. There’s a nervous tension simmering as we squint into the Midwestern sun, waiting for the first man to drop in high over our heads.
Early on in the men’s race Spaniard Bienvenido Aguado, at 37 one of the oldest riders, tumbles down a drop and snaps his front fork. Time stretches out slowly until relieved cheers erupt as he sits up, throwing his helmet down in disappointment; his race is over. Polish rider Szymon Godziek shatters his bike into pieces after front-flipping down a steep rock face, but ultimately hops away unaided.
Others are not so lucky.
Spaniard Adolf Silva misses a double backflip and tips forward over his bike, landing on his head with a sickening thud. He ragdolls down the mountainside, lying still at the bottom. After the gasps and cheers accompanying every jump the silence is thick and eerie.
There’s an agonising wait as spectators and medical staff run to his side, before a rescue helicopter stationed lower down the mountain makes its slow way up to collect him, rolling dust clouds shielding the stretcher he is placed on. Later we hear he is conscious and talking to family, with an unspecified lower back injury confirmed on Monday.
Eventually the competition resumes. A regular attendee tells us that normally major crashes happen in practice; this time two happen on the same finals day. Emil Johansson flies out of the gate and, coming down a technical section on the ridge line, attempts an ambitious tailwhip but lands hard and awkwardly. We can only watch in horror as his bike clatters down the mountainside, while spectators reach out and grab hold of the Swede to arrest his fall.
His rescue takes a long time; he is in too much pain to move off the narrow ledge, and another air ambulance helicopter is called in to lower a stretcher and ferry him to hospital in St George, 40 miles away. Johansson only just made his full return to competition in August after two injury-afflicted years. He now faces another surgery to remove shards of bone from a dislocated hip, and yet more rehab.
But no-one doubts that the Swede will be back. For these riders simply getting on the bike is a compulsion, an irresistible urge, an addiction. Argentinian Cami Noguiera competed on Thursday despite dislocating her elbow earlier in the week in practice. She tells us she wouldn’t miss it for the world.
“This is my dream and I was putting all that I had for this. I think I did my runs with my heart and my brain,” she explains. “It was a rollercoaster of emotions. Once I was up there I was like ‘you’re fine’. I really think that everything is in the brain and if your brain is strong, everything is going to be good.
“I do it because I love it – it’s my job too, but first it’s my passion. So it goes from my heart.” The draw of freeriding in particular is easily explained: “I love this kind of riding, to do big stuff, I love to go spicy,” she says.
18-year-old Finley Kirschenmann is the youngest competitor this year. From Sandy, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Red Bull Rampage is in his blood. Mum TK has worked behind the scenes at the event for years, and he took part as a digger last year; this is his tenth time at the race in some capacity. “The past couple of years I didn’t put an entry in even because it is a big risk for the event to put such young kids in, and people my age are not always the smartest when it comes to risk!” he laughs.
The riders all cope with the pressure differently; Kirschenmann listens to music throughout his preparation and during the run itself, and admits with a sheepish laugh that Afroman – a quirky choice – is the soundtrack for his maiden Rampage. It pays off: a stylish second run, after taking a tumble on his first, is enough for eighth, making him the final rider to punch an automatic ticket for next year.
Like in other extreme sports the sense of camaraderie and community among the riders – despite the fierce level of competition – is palpable. “It is a team sport, everyone works together on the lines,” says Whitlock, who injures his hand crashing on his first run and rolls down a second time purely to avoid disappointing the fans. “It is a collaborative effort between us to get the mountain in shape and the features rideable the way we do.”
At the same time, he adds: “We all have our own job to do and that’s the toughest part about Rampage: as tight as we are, we’re all here to do one thing and that’s to make it to the bottom.” Kirschenmann, who completed his second run after witnessing Silva’s crash, says: “You kind of go through a wave of emotions where you’re guilty, you’re like, ‘Fuck, why did that have to happen to him?’”
Regaining your composure after a serious crash is a tall order. The teenager says: “It’s kind of like a blackout, a controlled blackout. You kind of shut your brain off, you know what you’re doing. In those times it’s the most important to be the most hyped you can be and the most positive you can be, because if that person was here, Adolf would have been so bummed if all of us stopped riding, he wants to see all of us push just as hard as he was. The goal was to bring the energy back up and that’s exactly what we needed.”
It’s “muscle memory”, he adds: “My brain knows how to do it, my body knows how to do it, so it’s all about trusting myself and going for it.”
Nearly two hours after Johansson’s crash the final few riders make their second runs. Down below the media section a small boy builds mud-castles as he waits, showing some of the composure that could see him become a Red Bull Rampage champion of the future.
Over the course of that delay the wind has picked up and American Reed Boggs, the final competitor still to run, calls off his second attempt. After the drama of the afternoon it’s not worth the risk.
Marseille-born Tomas Lemoine led after the first run – a lengthy wheelie section along the uneven ground, past a cluster of euphoric French fans, a particular highlight – but opts against going twice. That means he misses out on a podium spot on his debut Rampage by just 0.34 points. But the 29-year-old, a slopestyle specialist, tells us: “It was a dream to be here, and I had one mission, to make it down the finish line. I’ve been riding slopestyle forever and never felt the same as today on the run.
“I could go and risk a lot more now, but for what result? I didn’t come here for a podium or a specific result, my win was just to make it with this run down. I broke my two feet less than two years ago, and I was like okay, the dream was realised, I’m healthy, I’m going to go home and ride my bike all winter – that was more important than trying to get a few more points, for me today.”
The day before the men’s competition a host of media and creators are given the chance to ride the Snake Pit, the lower bowl of the women’s course right before the finish corral. Having witnessed the ease and grace of the professionals we’re at least expecting to make a decent fist of it.
But wobbling around on a huge, lumbering bike, trying to muster the courage to attempt a small drop, this particular amateur can only marvel at the pros’ skill – to say nothing of their unwavering passion and fearsome dedication to a sport that often takes far more than it gives.
On the bike I feel like a baby giraffe taking my tentative first steps; the pros combine effortless riding with seamless tricks and jaw-dropping stunts before landing perfectly back on the dirt, rider and machine extensions of one organism.
For these riders, psychologically trained to block out any ‘what if’ scenario, that feeling is worth the potentially devastating consequences. If the risks are huge, the rewards are too: 22-year-old Canadian Hayden Zablotny crashes on his first run but throws everything into his second, an enormous score of 96 cementing a win on his maiden appearance.
“Getting to put your creativity on that mountain and ride and show the world my riding in such an incredible landscape, it’s a feeling that’s unbeatable. So it’s worth [all the risks] for sure,” Bergemann says, a beaming smile on her face, before heading off to sign autographs for a horde of excited kids. “It’s the pinnacle,” adds British rider Tom Isted, 10th on his second Rampage appearance.
And it’s unmissable, despite simultaneously being unwatchable half the time.
For the riders life can be divided into before Rampage and after Rampage. Lemoine is already looking ahead to his return to Utah in 2026. “I’m going to practice more if I’m going to go bigger next year. This is the start of my new life, I guess,” he smiles.