Apologies for the pinkbike style post but….

http://www.vitalmtb.com/features/First-Glimpse-of-the-2012-Red-Bull-Rampage-Course,365

I am looking forward to this, but the whole point of rampage (for me anyhow) is big ugly rock faces and stupidly large drops etc, not:

WTF are they building stuff like this for? there are plenty of slope style courses out there… Hummm..

I agree. Especially as the person who won it last year, did it due to a (admittedly huge) slopestyle trick.

It’s almost becoming a duel of Gee/Barrecloth/natural riders versus the slopestyle riders.
Maybe that’s what they want.

Anyway – either way, I’ll be looking forward to the 1080p slow mo youtube downloads again.

They’ve always had a mix of wooden and natural features, allowing the riders to mix and match. I will reserve judgement until I watch the main event.

This Cat looks like a beast!

They’ve always had a mix of wooden and natural features

They haven’t. it has only been the past couple years really.

I all up for a few additional features, but this will just be a big kicker comp.

Bah!

Wasn’t it in Australia the first year, when they had some massive wooden drops?

I though Gee’s run last year was by far the best, he were robbed by a bloke doing a twirl.

I loved Gee’s approach last year… “Right that’s it, that’s the run I wanted to do- I’m off” “But you’ve got a second run, you might do better!” “Nah. That one was good”

October 7th, date in diary. Last one was amazing to watch live. But I do kinda agree about the woodwork.

My take (And I might be wrong here) is that its always been held in Utah and the first few years at least were just a few days of riders with shovels setting up dirt kickers and sighting landings 25-50 foot away and then they just rode it…

Take a look at some of the earlier Sprung DVDs, the Rampage sections in those I can’t remember much if any woodwork…

Don’t think it really needs great big Crankworx style constructed ramps and I’d prefer it if the only people allowed to do any of the course digging/building were the riders, keep it lo-fi and simple and let the competitors define the course and the event, that would actually help to differentiate it from all the Slopestyle events IMO…

2008 they had wooden kickers, along with dirt ones, and I guess they have just become bigger.

The riders will still have to deal with the natural terrain, so I wouldn’t worry about it becoming an average SS event.

Don’t get me wrong: I prefer the natural. big-mountain lines that Bearclaw and Gee do, and really aren’t a big fan of the “performing seal” routines, but if the wooden stuff means hug air-time, mixed with sketchy, mountain-lines, then it’s all good.

Watching Cam’s run from 2010 (the last one), there was a lot of dirt riding in there too. The only bit of wood was the Oakley Sender. I’d forgotten about some of the rest.

I can imagine as promoters of the event, it’s always good to make sure you have a few great bike-against-sky-sponsor-logos-in-view shots to throw around.

I just went on a trawl of old footage – there seems to be a lot more trail grooming now – all the bits between the jumps were properly rough before (either that or the suspension was totally ineffectual!

It will be interesting to see how the likes of Anthony Messere and Paul Basagoitia get on i.e. riders from a more BMX/traditional SS background.

My take (And I might be wrong here) is that its always been held in Utah and the first few years at least were just a few days of riders with shovels setting up dirt kickers and sighting landings 25-50 foot away and then they just rode it…

Take a look at some of the earlier Sprung DVDs, the Rampage sections in those I can’t remember much if any woodwork…

Don’t think it really needs great big Crankworx style constructed ramps and I’d prefer it if the only people allowed to do any of the course digging/building were the riders, keep it lo-fi and simple and let the competitors define the course and the event, that would actually help to differentiate it from all the Slopestyle events IMO…

+1

That there Paul Basagoitia can go BIG, recon he will be worth watching for sure.

I’d quite like to see the little slopestylists as well as the Darnhillerists all digging for a couple of days prior to the main event, they must all be able to imagine a line and dig it in, it’s not like they got into MTB/BMX or whatever and just happened to have a ridiculous park full of huge ramps and dirt jumps round the corner from their Nan’s house is it?

They will have started off in the sport by digging their own trails, I think it would be quite nice to have one event where viewers get to see what happens when you remove the professional course designer and $50k worth of timber and leave some professional Gnarly bicyclerists in the desert with enough water and some shovels…

It’s not that I don’t like Slopestyle comps, its just I think the Rampage should actually be a wee bit different, as for getting sponsors logos in shot, well they don’t need a chuffing great wooden kicker for that. plenty of well placed windbreaks, banners, riders and hangers-on all over the place, covered in Logos will remind us all to go buy the correct brands of caffinated dogs piss, pricey sunglasses and easily bent Deraileurs…

best comp ever.

the argument to building features is that riders dont get time to finish lines. or build them properly.

i just like to see the footage of robbie bourdon. he is properly nuts in choosing what is actually rideable. the guys that stick to the main senders are a bit lame and dont really embrace the spirit of the event.

although the footage of gees gap to wallride is some o the best mtb footage i`ve ever seen. in fact his whole run is probably the best.

i hope the course bulders dont pander to teh slopestyle guys too much.

the argument to building features is that riders dont get time to finish lines. or build them properly.

Don’t they have more or less a week of building and trying it out before the Rampage? Looked to me that Gee, Berrecloth managed to have well created lines that hardly used any of the pre-build stuff

Whilst I agree with the OP, I guess the organisers are trying to give the Pinkbike kids what they want.

And that is a bloody huge jump.

thing for me is: as a judge how do you differentiate between some big SS style jumps and someone taking a very steep and technical line that they have built… that misses out some of the ‘main’ feature…

hard to do IMO…. better get Edexcel onto it.

dammm. more and more woodwork is going in…

http://www.redbullusa.com/cs/Satellite/en_US/Article/rampage-2012-sculpting-desert-landscape-021243259374235

this is more like it:

http://www.vitalmtb.com/photos/features/Rampage-Day-2,4392/Slideshow,0/bturman,109
Fooken ell’ Brendan’s and Gee’s lines are HUGE.

bearclaw was robbed last year not gee.

I take it all back. video of qualis is out.

http://www.redbull.com/en/bike/stories/1331577084626/qualifier-results-and-action-from-red-bull-rampage

Too excited for this. Haven’t mtbed in months but the build up to this just makes me want to go out there and ‘shred’

Doerfling in just a tank top 😆