{"id":8951,"date":"2025-12-17T10:15:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T09:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/uk\/?p=8951"},"modified":"2025-12-22T10:20:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T09:20:11","slug":"further-and-deeper-how-far-can-the-modern-freeride-era-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/uk\/2025\/12\/17\/further-and-deeper-how-far-can-the-modern-freeride-era-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Further and Deeper: How Far Can the Modern Freeride Era Go?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year\u2019s Red Bull Rampage brought a mix of bold, spectacular jumps \u2013 and some brutal crashes, including one that left a rider with permanent injuries. So the question is: does MTB freeriding have any limits or will it keep pushing further? Will we see twenty-metre drops? And will that progress come at the price of serious injuries? Here, professional rider Richard Gasperotti \u2013 who competed at Red Bull Rampage several times in the early 2000s \u2013 reflects on the evolution of freeriding.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cMaybe things didn\u2019t happen exactly the way I describe them, but this is how I remember it,\u201d says Richard Gasperotti, who around that time decided to end a promising downhill racing career and move toward a new discipline: freeriding. \u201cIt must have been around 2001, when I was in Canada riding with the best. I became part of Flow Riders, the flying circus led by Dangerous Dan, who put together a team of bike stunt performers. We toured large Canadian stadiums, showing audiences what freeriding actually was. We had massive folding ramps and were sending big drops. It was new, pioneering, and people looked at us like real oddities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same thing was happening in the forests of North Vancouver, in the legendary North Shore area. Trails with obstacles and wooden ladders were being built by Todd Fiander, known in the community as Digger. He also filmed everything, which is how the early Xtreme Northshore films were created. I was lucky enough to appear in one of them, and it helped put me on the map,\u201d Richard recalls of the pioneering days, a quarter century ago, when freeriding was just beginning. On the North Shore, Gaspi became friends with Wade Simmons, who won the first Red Bull Rampage in 2001.<\/p>\n

The extreme Josh Bender<\/strong><\/h2>\n

While Canadians were developing technical riding on the North Shore, something entirely different was happening in the United States. A rider, unlike anyone the MTB world had ever seen, appeared. His name wasJosh Bender, originally from Alaska, where skiers and snowboarders tackled extreme slopes. \u201cJosh was uncompromising and extreme. He had a special bike built with huge suspension and would send fifteen-metre drops on it. His success rate was maybe 20%. The rest of the time, he crashed violently, but that didn\u2019t seem to bother anyone. We all watched him open-mouthed, unable to believe someone could have that kind of courage.<\/p>\n

\u201cTodd Barber, owner of h5events, noticed Bender, and together they created a concept for a competition that would forever change MTB history: Red Bull Rampage in Utah,\u201d says Richard, who took part for the first time in 2002 as the very first European. The organisers found a spot among the orange cliffs of Zion, where riders could find lines unlike anywhere else in the world.<\/p>\n

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A post shared by Red Bull Bike (@redbullbike)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n