Red Bull Joyride and Rampage, pushing downhill riding to a new level

In professional football, there is the preseason, the regular season and the playoffs culminating in the Super Bowl.

In downhill Mountain Biking, there is crankworx AKA Red Bull Joyride “the playoffs”, then Red Bull Rampage, the “Super Bowl” of downhill mountain biking.

To say Red Bull Rampage is out of this world, may be a stretch. To fully grasp the insanity of what Rampage and Joyride, you need to see it with your own eyes.

Red Bull Joyride just finished in Whistler, Canada and eyes turn to Rampage in October, it is important to understand why these two events are so critical to the growth of downhill mountain biking.

Bringing together over 25,000 fans on the ground, and millions more around the world, Red Bull Joyride is the biggest stage in the sport.

Steeped in 15+ years of tradition, this is the most challenging event on the circuit. Staged in the “Boneyard,” the dirt stadium at the base of the Whistler Mountain Bike Park, Joyride offers the best slopestyle mountain bikers on the planet two runs – that’s two chances for glory, two opportunities to throw down high-scoring tricks and move up the leader board, and two moments in time to leave their mark on the history of the sport. The 14 best riders in the world bring their A-game to this invitational showcase, interpreting a custom-built course and giving it their all.

Conversely on October 25, hardcore followers of freeriding and millions of casual fans of action sports will call in sick or simply pretend to work for a good chunk of the day so they can watch the Red Bull Rampage. 

But why?!

Creativity. Red Bull Joyride and Rampage are so vital to the growth of the sport because unlike most judged events out there, the two events reward the athletes heavily for creativity and fans love it.

In addition to creativity, it is amazingly good fun, but these factors also play a role in the rise of popularity and if it wasn’t for events like Joyride and Rampage, some of these advances wouldn’t have happened as fast.

1. Suspension improvement and frame angle changes and improved bike changes that riders feed to the manufacture has made for bike technology to advance and make it much easier and more fun for average riders to hit challenging jumps and rock gardens.
2. Bike parks are more prevalent and new parks yet to be built have seen the profit potential and invested heavily in building new tracks and running lifts more regularly.
3. Social media, in particular YouTube and Instagram during the Joyride and Rampage have seen a huge explosion in featured downhill videos and photos which has got more people riding.

While Joyride features a more standard downhill park course, the riders use the features to go big and bring out new tricks. Rampage and the hand-built trails of lunacy feature drops that can measure over 70 feet! The competitors and the diggers are the magicians, but the mountain bikes that can withstand the abuse of this kind of riding are the unsung heroes. Fans marvel at the modern, human-powered machines and what some carbon, aluminum, plastic and rubber, when efficiently designed and assembled, can do.

So where will you be October 25? Onsite or online watching?