Although results are already in the bag – all the action was filmed last month – the world premiere is on Red Bull TV on 5 May (Tuesday, 7pm UK).
If last year’s inaugural event passed you by – or you just want to watch some bike racing for £0.00 – it’s worth clearing the diary for this one.
Natural Selection Bike? WTF is that? It’s basically a competition format that doesn’t quite fit any of the usual categories. It freeride, slopestyle and downhill on a single course. The ‘course’ being New Zealand’s Mt Dewar with its ridgelines, cliffs and hand-built features.
Riders do two scored runs and line choice is as much a tactical decision as a physical one (it says here). There’s no single way down; “creativity and commitment in equal measure”.
Unlike Red Bull Rampage – where riders build a single line choice – riders at Natural Selection ride multiple prebuilt trail features in any order they can put together in a single run. There’s a start and finish gate and riders can fill in the bits in between anyway they like to impress the judges.
Polish rider Szymon Godziek returns as defending champ; he won the inaugural 2025 event with a combined score of 92.88. He’s one of the favourites again, alongside Nicholi Rogatkin, Cam Zink, Reed Boggs and Thomas Genon. The up-n-coming generation is represented by Finley Kirschenmann, Kaidan Ingersoll and Hayden Zablotny.
The women’s field has doubled for 2026: eight riders this year versus four last year. Hannah Bergemann, Kirsten Van Horne and Vaea Verbeeck are ones to watch, as is New Zealander Robin Goomes. Britain’s Natasha Bradley is also competing.
The event operates on a full results ‘blackout’ until this global premiere, kinda like a season finale on Netflix rather than a conventional broadcast pushbike race. It might be wise to avoid certain social media channels if you want to watch it ‘fresh’. 7pm UK on Red Bull TV and YouTube. And it’s free to watch, unlike the World Cup.
More details on the NST Bike website
Watch last year’s event on Red Bull TV
