How women can get invited to Red Bull Rampage 2024

Chelsea Kimball jumped but didn’t land, knowing she wanted to compete in a free mountain bike race. On the American mountain biker’s first trip to Virgin City, Utah, in 2017, when Kimball was still new to the trail feature, she made a huge leap forward by jumping off a jump that landed higher than she took off. “There is absolutely no such skill,” she told PS. “I fell really hard. I flew 20 feet in the air, right over the railing. I got hit hard and landed like a pancake on the ground.”

The premise of freeride mountain biking is not a sprint to the finish line, but rather the rider creating the route themselves using natural elements like rocks, logs and dirt. These DIY courses come with steep descents and huge jumps, which in turn require commitment. Kimball was intimidated by Virgin’s early promotions, but she loved the feeling. “Whether it goes well or not, that feeling of accomplishing something new — venturing into the unknown and then finishing it and coming out the other side — always draws me to hitchhiking,” Kimball said.

This fall, Kimball will be one of eight riders from five countries venturing into the unknown of Utah’s Virgin State to experience the first women’s freeride: the Red Bull Rampage. The event has been held on the red rock cliffs of the Virgin Desert Mesa since 2001. Over the years, the Rampage has become the most extreme event in freeride, mountain biking, and all extreme sports. For the previous 17 editions of the Ride, only men were invited to participate.

Come October 2024, that’s set to change: Red Bull Rampage will launch its first-ever female lineup – led by former downhill racer and member of the freeride community for over a decade, Katie Hockey The result of a five-year effort led by Katie Holden, a long-time advocate for women in the sport.

Why women are being left out of the rampage scene — and how that’s changing

Katie Holden first attended Rampage as a spectator in 2010. She knew she wanted to be a part of it.

But at the time, in order to qualify for Rampage, women had to pass a global pool of male applicants. Holden recalls that few believed that even a handful of women – let alone their own roster – could navigate the Fury-style route on Virgin Atlantic. “Rampage is not a testing ground,” the event’s co-founder Todd Barber told Outside in 2018.

At the time, women weren’t invited to any of the big free ride events or video projects, nor did they figure much in bike marketing, says freerider Hannah Bergemann.

However, none of this has stopped Holden from setting his sights on Virgin’s mesa for a new kind of event. In 2019, she co-founded Formation, a free ride for women, after she and other women, including veteran Canadian rider Casey Brown, spent years trying without success to qualify for the Rampage event, held at the former Rampage venue in Virgin City, Utah.

Holden developed the event in partnership with Red Bull and cyclist Rebecca Rusch as a form of Rampage proof of concept. The event brings six riders to Virgin, giving them an outlet to improve and showcase what they are capable of. “We really just threw them into the deep end,” Holden said. “I have complete faith in them and know that if we give them the opportunity to go out there and get the digging support and media resources – if those are in place, I have no doubt that they will step up and show that it’s possible for everyone.”

And they did. The women dug the first track or line out of the Virgin dirt and rode it in the first year of the competition, and restored the Rampage line from top to bottom by the third year of the competition. “It’s hard to quantify or explain how much progress has occurred in those three years,” Bergman said. “It’s been crazy. From what we were trying, to riding some features, to building these full Rampage lines. The lines that Casey Brown and I rode in our third year of formation were the same ones that Brett Rheeder did on his Same line ridden in Rampage and he won with that line.

Across Formation’s three iterations from 2019 to 2022, the event has helped women prove to themselves that they are not only capable of delivering lines on Virgin’s exposed cliffs, but that they can call themselves hitchhikers and ride on this historic progress in the field.

For Kimball, whose freeriding career often had to take a back seat to her downhill racing career, formation changed everything. This is the first high-level campaign to focus resources such as cameras, drones and artwork on women hitchhiking. “The way Formation presents hitchhiking is significant because it’s the first time many people are seeing women there,” she said.

But formation riding also puts pressure on women, especially in their first year. “All of these women were very capable, but it felt like we had to make it perfect,” Holden said. “Perfect in every way, showing women what they can do. No one gets hurt. Everything has to be perfectly coordinated to take it into the future and get the industry behind it, which is what happens. But no one woman even Crashed in Formation 2019, it was crazy.

Holden and the riders at Formation face a fear they’ve encountered not only within the industry, but also from family, friends and other athletes, both male and female: the fear of seeing women in high-risk, high-reward situations. situation. “Men get hurt all the time, and for whatever reason, people are afraid of women falling or getting hurt,” Holden said. “It evokes a different emotion. People make decisions because of that emotion. That feeling – that people are somehow protective of women – somehow closes a lot of doors, and it blows my mind.”

Vaea Verbeeck, a three-time Formation rider from British Columbia who will race the Rampage in 2024, responded to the lingering risk. “To put it in perspective, these guys are mountain bikers,” she said. “Whether they’re male or female, it doesn’t matter. As a rider, you have to be yourself, you have to push yourself, and then it turns into something like Fury. You have to take risks and possibly fall. Pour, but you’ll get up and do it again.

After three years of training, it was obvious that women were capable of riding horses in a rage, even if they had not yet demonstrated the skill of men. The mountain biking community is agitated that this happened, with outlets such as Outside, Bike Mag and Pink Bike calling on Red Bull to step in and stop it. Then, the call finally came, breaking the news to Holden that women would be joining Rampage in 2024. “This is the hardest, hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

Holden said that by finally taking the stage in Fury, these women left a “suspended space” as athletes. “If you don’t have that goal, you don’t have that recognition, you don’t have the potential for bonuses, and you don’t have the opportunity or the industry support — financially or otherwise — to grow and develop. Develop, get there,” she said. “Once you have a goal, it doesn’t solve everything, but it creates an actual path that really moves things forward. So, yes, it’s just one event, but it’s so much more than that.”

With women finally joining Rampage, the riders on the first roster are excited to see what happens to their sport in the coming years. Kimball said the sport will become more professional because rage is an important bargaining chip in negotiations with sponsors.

In addition to Rampage, Formation’s collaborative energy continues to expand, allowing riders to create their own events: Kimball created Desert Days in Virgin City, Utah, and Bergemann created Hang Time in Bellingham, Washington. “At Formation, we ate and socialized together, and to this day, I am close friends with all of these girls,” Bergman said. “Building our community – like a solid foundation – is important to achieving our athletic goals.”

Suzie Hodges is a freelance writer fascinated by the outdoors, extreme sports, conservation, and science stories. In addition to PS, her work has appeared in Atlas Obscura, Blue Ridge Outdoors, Smithsonian Magazine, and The Daily Beast. Previously, she worked as a writer at Rare, an environmental advocacy group, and at Virginia Tech’s School of Engineering.