This past weekend, Red Bull Signature series in partnership with Fox Sports, brought to you the re-air of the 2019 Red Bull Rampage contest held in Southern Utah.
Sixteen stationary cameras, five additional cameras including drones and a fly cam, 6000 feet of cable fiber, 110 crew members and 21 riders all combined to bring you one of the craziest action sports contests you will ever see.
Brandon Semenuk, took home his third Rampage title after a stellar first run kept him in first place throughout the contest allowing him to use his second run and a victory lap.
While the production of the event, the 21 total cameras, the twenty football fields worth of cable, the seven total broadcast languages and multiple broadcast platforms is impressive and allows you the viewer to feel like you are on site watching the riders live, what you don’t see is the hundreds of man hours behind the scenes, preparing mother nature, digging apart a mountain, to create a winning run.
The art of the dig is more that just moving dirt.
Digging a line is about creating flow, consistent movement, safe passage and most importantly, a wow factor that makes judges stand up to hit rewind on the replay to make sure they didn’t just imagine what you just laid down. The art of the dig is what makes the winning run happen and the jaws to hit the ground.
While it is the rider who puts on the show, he and his two diggers are one unit before finals day. While there is preparation that goes into the contest before the crew arrives on site, it is the onsite work that will be the difference between winning and losing.
“Some changes to my line were premeditated from my experiences with the line the year before,” said Brandon Semenuk, the 2019 Red Bull Rampage winner. “But others had to wait until we were on site again and could get a better look at our options. You have to be malleable. Finding specific features is very challenging, especially when everything needs to link into one ridable line. You basically have to pick the best option you’re able to come up with on the scout day and stick to it.”
“It’s a puzzle,” said Just Wyper, one of the two diggers on the Semenuk crew. “You determine which features you want to have in your line, then you start to work back from there to the finish figuring out what options you have to put all the pieces together. Then the work begins.”
And when he says work, he means work. Every line at Red Bull Rampage is hand dug along with the natural terrain that southern Utah provides.
“There is times where you have a build a retaining wall or a landing jump that doesn’t exist, and sometimes the material needed to create that is no close. This is where you begin to go around and scour the area to push dirt or rocks to where you need them. Thankfully, often times, we can source dirt or other materials from higher points on the course and push it down the hill letting gravity help with the process.”
The argument about which is more insane can now be debated. Riding the course or the effort and strength needed to create the line.
“It is insane,” said Wyper. “It is absolute madness with what we are doing to create this. I work and have worked manual labor jobs for a long time. I have never worked as hard at any of those jobs, than we do in those eight days of digging. The amount of work that is accomplished from sun up to way past sun down in those eight days between the all teams combined is astounding. We literally build an entire professional massive bike park in eight days by hand. It always comes down to the wire, but we make it happen.”
Picking a team is so critical to success so what is the rider looking for?
“Our team is so unique,” said Wyper. “Evan (Young) works for Brandon (Semenuk) and I used to ride, so we all are familiar with each other and the style and talent we each bring to the table and it is a nice mesh. Evan knows Brandon’s style and what makes him successful and I have the ability to build it and with my background of knowing how to ride the feature, I can build it knowing how steep or not to create it to be successful. We formulate the line in our minds ahead of time, but when we are done, the line always becomes something bigger and better than we dreamt in the first place.”
While there is no actual statistic number for how many cubic yard are moved to create the line per team, the eight days of digging insanity paid off as the team brought home the most coveted title in all of freeride mountain biking.
The art of the dig, subtle and behind the scenes, but the biggest key to success.