Most people would look up at the towering terracotta marble of Utah’s terrain and see nothing but a picturesque, yet insurmountable, landscape. For a select, elite group that jagged rock presents a challenge: Get from top to bottom with the most flair possible.
Welcome to the wild world of freeride – the sport combining death-defying moves with artfully crafted runs woven down raw terrain in the most jaw-dropping spectacle.
And since 2001, the pinnacle of big-mountain riding has been found on the dusty near-vertical mountains of Virgin, Utah at Red Bull Rampage. This year though, those jagged red rocks set the stage for history.
On October 10, under the scorching sun, a couple thousand spectators stood on the desert sand with their necks craned toward the wooden starting ramp perched some 4,300 feet high and waited. They waited for a moment befitting its wild west setting. Most importantly, they waited for a watershed moment.
For the first time in its history, women competed in Red Bull Rampage. Yet why they or their male counterparts would want to is a mystery to the average person. To most people standing at the bottom or watching from home, the riders appear possessed by an inhuman level of courage – and frankly, insanity.
Red Bull Rampage made history last week as female riders competed for the first time
But Katie Holden, a trailblazer for women in the sport, admits that’s not the case. Even they have fear.
‘When folks look at this terrain here, it’s really hard to even comprehend how,’ she says. ‘You can’t wrap your head around it. But as with anything in life, you do things in incremental steps and you get a bit more brave each day.
‘That’s not to say that everyone’s gonna get here, but it’s also relative. People describe it out here as exposure therapy – of just being exposed to the point that you stop seeing it. It’s still scary, but when I walk around out here now, I don’t even see the edges anymore, which is so crazy.’
For Robin Goomes, Georgia Astle, Casey Brown, Vaea Verbeeck, Vero Sandler, Vinny Armstrong and Chelsea Kimball, that fear was coupled with the magnitude of the moment.
Throughout 17 editions of the event, the world’s top male freeriders have gathered at the hallowed ground of Virgin for Red Bull Rampage to put down their biggest and most daring runs in a competition described as mountain biking’s Super Bowl.
The rules are simple: Get from point A to point B down the sheer face of a mountain on a bike in the most spectacular way possible… in one piece.
This year though the men weren’t alone in their treacherous navigation.
Red Bull Rampage has been pushing the sport’s boundaries since its inaugural event and last week it hit another milestone. After years of advocating for women’s inclusion, attempting to qualify for the event, and hosting their own events, the sport’s top female riders finally got their chance.
Robin Goomes (center) finished first with Georgia Astle (L) second and Casey Brown (R) third
Most people would look at the raw jagged terrain of Utah and see a route down as impossible
‘They were so scared,’ says Holden, who was a pioneer for women in freeriding as a rider herself on the circuit for ten years and also the brainchild of Red Bull Formation, a week-long women’s freeride camp.
‘I was with them before they walked up for their runs, and I could, you could just see so much fear in their eyes. Not just fear, but the weight of the world was on their shoulders too.’
But even fear couldn’t hold these women back.
Four simple words, ‘three, two, one, dropping,’ echoed across the desert and Robin Goomes dropped from the wooden gate and into the history books.
The New Zealander was the first rider on the venue – selected by a random draw – and she was the first woman atop the podium.
Every day for the 30 days leading up to the competition, Goomes had written herself the same message: ‘I am the winner of Red Bull Rampage.’ Last week, she fulfilled her prophecy.
With a run punctuated with two flawless backflips, a 41-foot drop and steep riding, Goomes was awarded a score of 85 points by the panel of judges, who critique the riders on their flair, jumps, and line choice.
Her six competitors followed, laying down runs of their own that flowed around tight corners, over consequential gaps and down huge drops. But none could beat the Kiwi. Not veteran Brown who clinched third with 77.33 points, or last-minute alternate Astle, whose 79 points sealed second.
Goomes from New Zealand was the first rider to drop and the first women on the podium
Goomes celebrated her victory with a ‘shoey’ as her competitors showered her in champagne
‘Rampage is the craziest event. It’s higher stress than anything else I’ve ever done,’ Goomes confessed following her podium-topping performance.
‘There’s so many other factors. You put two weeks into building your line, you’re fatigued, the wind is there, and you’re battling all of these things that you can’t control. All you can do is focus on what you can control. You’re just sitting there trying to take it step by step, one feature by feature.’
‘I get so scared,’ she added. ‘I’m always terrified. I think it’s only moments before I drop in and I’m actually riding my bike that it gets really fun and exciting. Everything before is fear, and then I somehow switch it and turn it into excitement.’
For such a high-impact, thrilling sport, with every rider that took the plunge off the start gate, an eerie silence blanketed the desert. The cheers died down and the cowbells stopped clanging. Just the whir of the helicopter overhead could be heard.
Breaths were held. Stomachs were rolling tidal waves of nausea and nerves. And that was just the spectators waiting at the bottom, the second-hand adrenaline coursing through their veins.
Then the moment each woman careened through the finish gate into the corral, the festival atmosphere roared back to life. Virgin transformed into a carnival as the riders were greeted by their fellow competitors in sweeping hugs and signed autographs for children – and even the occasional adult forehead – all while still riding the high.
Vaea Verbeeck of Canada rides a huge drop on the course in Virgin, Utah
Brown, the 33-year-old veteran, clinched third with 77.33 points
Free riding isn’t for the faint-hearted. That much is immediately evident from the moment you watch a person teeter on the edge of a cliff, riding the line between success and catastrophe on just two wheels.
To the newcomers to the sport, it’s crazy, jaw-dropping spectacle. There’s the presumption that the riders are fearless, super-beings to even contemplate such a feat. Yet, speaking to the riders at Rampage, that theory is swiftly dispelled. Naturally they have fear, they’ve just learned to ride the rollercoaster of nerves.
There’s always a risk. Of course there is when they’re taunting death. That delicate balance is what makes it impossible for the spectators to tear their eyes away from the visceral display.
Yet, it had been that repeated refrain of fear that women would be getting in over their heads, and that someone was going to end up seriously injured – or worse – that had continuously shunned the notion of female participation.
‘There’s this sense of people wanting to protect women,’ Holden explains. ‘It shows up across sports, culture, business and so forth. It’s just built into people’s mentality, and when those people are making decisions about the future and they are the ones holding the power to move things forward, that is the thing to get past.
‘The idea that whether or not a woman is safe, when a woman crashes versus a man crushes, it evokes a different emotion for people.’
That mentality was the greatest obstacle to overcome but with a helping hand from social pressure, Holden and her fellow female riders were able to chip away at the stigma.
‘Look at the kind of general trend in sports, specifically women’s sport, and even women’s business and culture over the last year,’ Holden says.
Goomed punctuated her winning run with two flawless backflips
There was a festival atmosphere at the bottom where riders celebrated in the corral
The couple of thousand spectators celebrated the milestone moment
‘So much happened with the US Women’s National Team, Barbie, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. All these huge moments of women doing really big, powerful things and showing up. If you give them the opportunity and like, allow them in that space, they will show up and they will absolutely succeed.’
‘For most readers, this event doesn’t feel like something that they can relate to,’ she adds. ‘Most people aren’t going to want to do that. But I feel that these kinds of lessons and the threads that parallel all these other aspects of life – sport and culture and business – could be applied to so many lessons we learn as humans in the world.
‘Stepping back and looking back on it, it feels like a representation of how to keep moving forward in life, trying new things and doing things that are scary, overcoming those and setting yourself up for success in different ways that are going to help you achieve those things.’
And at Rampage, the women demonstrated that the fear was overblown. Six of the seven – a lineup artfully put together like a Premier League team or an NFL roster, selected for their skill, line choice and, of course, ‘gnarliness’ demonstrated in previous events and submission videos – put down perfectly clean lines.
Only Kimball crashed, but the 33-year-old got back on her bike – figuratively and literally – as she became the only rider to climb back to the top to attempt a second run, despite the howling wind.
With the added layer of danger from the gusts that can easily turn the wheels of a bike into sails, Kimball’s anxiety radiated from the tight, pained expression on her face but in the blink of an eye, the veteran composed it into a determined slate
Katie Holden likened the social impact of women in freeriding to Taylor Swift and Barbie
Astle described the mental battle against fear as a TV static washing over her mind
Chelsea Kimball picked herself up and dusted herself off after crashing during her run
Astle describes that mental battle against omnipresent fear as a TV static washing over her mind.
‘All of a sudden your brain kind of shuts down and there’s no logic,’ she says. ‘As soon as you get those bad thoughts in your head, like, “What if I crash” – that’s not what you want to think about before you go into a feature. So for me, not being scared is a completely perfect vision of how I’m gonna take off, how I’m gonna land, and the fear part is literally just my brain having a squiggle TV static in front of it.’
Just like any elite athlete, the riders go through a multifaceted preparation, equipped with mental coaches, nutritionists and their trusted team of diggers to handle the emotional, technical and particularly physical challenges demanded of them.
‘You hit big impacts,’ insists Astle, who, as a third-alternate, only found out she would be competing three and a half weeks before. ‘And right now, my body is gonna need weeks off just from the impact you can’t even prepare yourself for.’
Competitor Casey Brown claimed the women were ‘more calculated’ in their riding compared to the men but Astle also insisted that they have greater obstacles to overcome such as their menstrual cycles, which can significantly impact their headspace.
‘I don’t think people can really comprehend what pioneers these women are,’ says World Champion cross-country mountain bike cyclist Kate Courtney.
‘The amount of intuition and confidence you have to have to see a line, build it and then say, I think this is gonna work, and I have the skills to do it and be the first to send it, is just unbelievable.’
‘They’re the first women pushing off from that start gate,’ adds the American, who watched among the spectators.
World Champion cross-country mountain biker Kate Courtney hailed the women as ‘pioneers’
Male riders Cam Zink and Carson Storch are pictured with their diggers
Brown claimed the women were ‘more calculated’ in their runs compared to the male riders
‘As a woman in sport, you have to do it better and be perfect in order to prove that you belong there. I think things are changing, but there was a crowd of people ready to say, “Oh, see, this was too much for the women.”
‘So to me, the ability to trust that you got this, push off, go for it, and then stomp those runs, I can’t underscore how much that matters for women in sport.
‘While I’m sure there’s a lot of women who are inspired by it that are never going to do jumps – me included – I think the lessons that you can learn from that and what it says about where we are as a society and in sport will really transcend freeride.’
The journey may have been long but once they finally reached the pinnacle, those seven women weren’t wasting their shot in Utah. They undoubtedly grabbed the (Red) Bull by the horns.
