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The Red Bull Rampage 2025 competitors are onsite in Utah, starting the final countdown to the events
Can't wait! Just reading on Redbull.com - this year the women riders are attempting stuff that's been lairy for the men in the past. The progression is amazing.
I'm one of the outliers on this who wants less slopestyle and more gnar... but i'll be watching it and marvelling at their skills and the things they do... it's a mystery to me how though !
Oh that's handy, MrsMonkey is out tonight (and watching Strictly tomorrow) so I can watch them both liveish!
Yeah, I get the feeling they are trying to get back to the freeride style roots. And Brendan should've been on the podium last year!
I'm one of the outliers on this who wants less slopestyle and more gnar...
I don't think you're an outlier, it does veer closer and closer to just another big slope event the more built it becomes
I agree. Its turned into a slopestyle event with sculpted features. Its no longer about wid natural lines
Rampage has had built features and sculpted jumps since the second event over 20 years ago and people have been complaining that it's not freeride anymore for almost as long.
If it was pure wild freeride runs down the mountain it wouldn't be much of a competition. All of the top riders are capable of riding every route and every run would be the same.
Is the scoring not just a farce? How can there be science to the scores where someone wins by .33/100. Why not just judge them as first, second third etc….they clearly know what scores the next placed person is and seem to just pitch the score, to two decimal places.
I wouldn't have any judging take place until after the first runs are complete. Especially in the mens event where there are 3 times as many competitors. Someone always gets an inexplicably high score leaving no head room for genuinely better runs.
I really don’t understand why the women have to do it mid week, they need the same weekend exposure as the men
The women’s winning run just came up on my social media.
Don’t get me wrong their talent is amazing. I almost prefer the women’s runs as they have more natural flow to them, but why bother with a dig crew , just given them a JCB and big roller thing to pull behind it
Its a manicured track carved out of the side of a hill
It appears all mtb these days is heading in direction of very man made tracks. Maybe it’s I’m just getting old and boring, but to me mtb was about getting out in nature and riding natural stuff
Friday was reserved as a weather day in case the forecast for Saturday was bad, which it is, so they switched to Friday to avoid the high winds. Nothing to do with exposure.
People who say Rampage is manicured should be forced to go there and ride it.
That surface might look smooth through a zoom lens from a mile away and broadcast through the internet. It's rough AF in real life. It's soft, loose and unpredictable. The reason they build landings is so that people don't die.
Friday was reserved as a weather day in case the forecast for Saturday was bad, which it is, so they switched to Friday to avoid the high winds. Nothing to do with exposure.
The women’s was supposed to be on Thursday
This is so ridiculously entertaining! Had everything this year. I know people are going to whing about the mountain being too sculpted, but man, some of these runs are crazy. Adolf getting his arse out was fun too! 🤪
I really don’t understand why the women have to do it mid week, they need the same weekend exposure as the men
Because they won’t run them Saturday and Sunday due to weather risks, nor will they fund staying for another week so the ladies get Thursday.
The sponsors are interested in the images for the socials and adverts. Buy a ford truck and you too can huck a cliff as a tough guy
Anyone else think Godziak's bike looks too cumbersome to be flipping it like he does?? Isted using 26" wheels makes more sense.
Spoken like a true spectator, ikr
That Silva crash looks really bad, he was nowhere near landing that double flip… Couldn’t believe Godziek got up from his to be fair! It’s a hard watch sometimes
Thankfully missed the Silva crash. Probably turning it off now... Hopefully some positive news will come through shortly.
Just said he’s awake and talking
Now they just need to shut the stupid women up who keeps screaming 😱
They’very just said Silva is conscious and talking, it was definitely the worst crash I've seen at Rampage
That was someone scrambling to hold on for their life.
It’s getting a bit stupid. 2 people in one event with near death crashes.
No people really around either
When does a bike race become a snuff movie?
Hopefully not today, but this is an event that will almost certainly lead to life changing injuries.
Yep I’d have more respect for Red Bull if they called it now
A good 30k viewers have already switched off
Time to reassess the event.
There's extreme sport and there's prurient, gonzo voyeurism. It is too close to the latter now.
That's not to say there is no way this kind of event can be done and it can still be a spectacle. But that level of attrition and risk is too high for me.
Random example - rugby scrums. Back in the 70s and 80s it was all dark arts and nastiness on a one to one level. By the 90s and pseudo professionalism and full professionalism you've got front rows of a size and musculature previously unheard of basically running at each other pushed by five other man mountains just to engage a scrum. It became a test of sheer courage/recklessness much of the time. The answer was pretty obvious with the pre-engage so it can become something of a contest of technique and strength again.
I'm not sure how this would apply to Rampage other than in the concept. But watching a guy scrambling with his fingertips not to die (or worse) is not sport.
I hope that all the riders injured make full recoveries.
I can’t decide if it’s time to change or not.
The only 2 sports I can think of that have similar risk or IoM TT and wing suiting.
Neither of them are watched live on TV (could be wrong)
However still to date Ramage has a zero death rate so that’s ok 🤷♂️
The IoM TT is interesting in the way the deaths and grief are handled on any coverage. They are usually acknowledged at the end of any programme with a caption and a photo or two, IME. It's almost as though they are saying "this was our friend, our sorrow, it is not something to be made a spectacle of".
In my post above, I said death or worse. I've no doubt that, for this level of athlete in particular, there are worse things than death. It doesn't need me to spell out what they might be.
Some of the riding yesterday was absolutely incredible. Unfortunately it felt a little overshadowed by the scale of things that went wrong. At least there were medics with Silva within seconds. What would have happened had Johansson been more seriously injured? There's just no way to rush aid to any point on the mountain. Just have to hope for fast and full recoveries for those involved.
The video of Silva should be watched. Uncomfortabke viewing, but RedBull Rampage is a giant advert and dont want a bad look.
Personally I dont want to bother with anything RedBull pumps out anymore for a fizzy drinks company who dont give a shit about thier zero hour employees.
"Dy'in aint much of a living, boy"
The video of Silva should be watched. Uncomfortabke viewing, but RedBull Rampage is a giant advert and dont want a bad look.
Personally I dont want to bother with anything RedBull pumps out anymore for a fizzy drinks company who dont give a shit about thier zero hour employees.
"Dy'in aint much of a living, boy"
The riders would do this event whether sponsored by RedBull or Toys'R'Us.... They want to ride this stuff and a couple of riders commented how they've been riding this terrain since they were small.
Time to reassess the event.
It feels increasingly irrelevant as it reaches its quarter century next year.
It was an event that was created when 'hucking' was the cool thing to do and in the early days it genuinely felt like the riders were just out riding the hills and chosing their own lines ... in a truly extreme manner.
Whilst the extreme is definitely still a factor and the skill levels (and straight out madness) remain super high, to me it's a style of riding that's had its day in an event that's over sanitised*. The trails are so prepared that it's lost the feeling of spontaneous lines so is now just the top end of a slopestyle event ... and who really cares about that these days?