|
The
Red Bull Ride is an extreme freeride / downhill mountain
bike event held each year on a purpose built course
in Jindabyne, NSW, Australia. It is invite only for
riders, media, and officials, no spectators are allowed
due to environmental considerations.
I
was fortunate as one of the official photographers to
be there to record the amazing riding skills of some
of the worlds best mountain bikers including World Number
1 Down Hill World Cup Champ for 2002, Steve
Peat from the UK, and runner up World Cup Champ
Down Hill for 2002, Cedric
Gracia from France. Junior World Down Hill champ
for 2002, Sam
Hill (age 17) from Australia, Tyler Klassen, winner
of Red Bull Rampage 2002 in Utah, and a host of big
drop freeride video kings, like Grant Allen from Australia,
Dave Watson from Canada, and Timo
Pritzel from Germany. Please click
here for the full rider list
.
What
impressed me the most from the outset was the ability
of these riders to never say die, for example Steve
Peat busted his fork on a big drop on training day,
that's a Rockshox Boxxer with titanium bolts that he
broke by the way. He had to wait until Timo broke his
new Scott High Octane to borrow his forks, before getting
out again. Cedric's two brand new Siemens Mobile Cannodale
bikes were lost in transit and did not turn up at our
hotel until midnight the morning of competition day.
He had not had a chance to practice the circuit at all,
and went out on comp day to finish with an admirable
7th overall.
Probably
the most impressive stunt of any rider was Grant Allen
from Australia who was the only guy to hit up the 30ft
drop. He landed cleanly and threw his helmet nearly
30ft in the air with the excitement of his feat. Which
was quite a big one as he has just recently recovered
from a broken foot from doing a similiar sized jump
in North America, while filming for Freewheel Burning
Disorder III. |
|
Shaums
March from the USA walked away from a huge stack, ripping
is bike in two and completely ruining his front wheel
and fork. I have composited this sequence of shots below
under Section 5. One of the most impressive rides of
the event was Nathan
Rennie, currently one of Australia's hopefuls on
the World Championship circuit, Nathan managed to do
a 360 on top of the box in section 6 after landing a
big drop in heat 1 on comp day. Nathan managed to top
all riders in heat 1. With the rules being the top 10
riders go on to compete for final placings. Young Sam
Hill from Australia won, with John Waddell second and
Nathan Rennie third. Quite a feet that Australia took
away a 1,2,3 from the international world champion line
up of riders. |
