Red Bull Rampage 2012 / "It was hot, dusty and pretty wild!" / by Michael Müller
1st day:
After a perioad of twisting and turning because of Guidos crash and all booked flights finally we are on the way to the Red bull Rampage. First stop Las Vegas. Las Vegas Strip – check. Hard Rock Cafe – check. Burger – check. American Breakfast – check. Gambling – not. Shorts – check. Caravan – check. On the road to virgin.
2nd day:
When we planed the RedBull Rampage trip, we realized that the event is getting bigger. All hotels close by were fully booked, so we decided to do it the american way – roadtrippin´with a motorhome. Loading the carvan, searching for the next shopping mall and get the stuff you need. That´s a lot – especially in supersize USA. Cruisin´towards utah we were happy to leave the insanity of las vegas.
3rd day:
We were part of the lucky ones who get a ride to the event area, most of the spectactors had to walk or ride their bike the 5 miles of dusty road. Arriving at the event site we were excited right away. While walking up the trails, dust everywhere and the riders passing by on quads, there were different lines overall, more than in any former Rampage. The Safety lines were prefered in the 1st qualification run, however also major crashes like Sam Pilgrim hang up on the landing ended in a frontflip where his head nearly strapped the dirt. The worst crash was by mike hopkins, he launced himself way to fast over the 20 meters step down, still three meters airtime over landing so he made it nearly to the flat. Can McCaul, first in the qualification took the big gap whipping in motocross style. The second run in the afternoon was quite short as some riders were injured, as well as the riders who were safe about the qualification didn´t compete and finally the wind got so strong that the last runs were cancelled.
4th day:
Between the qualification and the final the riders get one more day for practice, where we get the posibillity to climb up to the starting point. When we looked up to the start, we couldn´t imagine how to ride on this narrow ridge. As closer as we came to the top it get´s unbelievable. On top we met Kyle Norbraten – “Fuck that looks so scary”. We couldn´t believe that some riders would take the straight line in the final. Late afternoon many of the riders took their last chance to practice and it was a real showdown – for us even better than qualification day. Especially Andreu “the Cat” Lacondeguy impressed us with his high speed performance on the upper part. For the maloja winter catalouge we did the first shoots in the last light on the event area. As we would take some catalouge shots in the morning we decided to stay over night on the event parking where a lot of spectators already were camping. It felt like on a festival between motorhomes, tents and sleeping bags. After the breakfast shooting on the motorhome we went to the event area really early. On all days wind raises in the afternoon so the organization tried to get the two final runs down without a break. We went up to Brandon Semonuks big transfer step down which he has build over two weeks with his team. Once it started it went really fast. Brett Rheeder had a super nice run on the left ridge. Everybody was curious about Semunuks drop but he took it smooth and easy but crashed a No-foot-can-can. Bearclaw also failed on his first run. Kyle Norbraten amazed us witht two nice 360ies drop downs in a row. Eighties rocker and young gun Will White was our favourite. He went down the whole mountain on his old Karpiel bike that wasn´t looking better than his disrupted jeans, super fast and aggressive. Sadly he got not that much points on the rankings as we would give him. Deserved leader after first round was Kurt Sorge, who did a big nice backflip step-down. Frenchman Antoine Bizet, crashed in the first round and came up with a fast and fluent 2nd run with four backflips and gets second. The big names failed also in the second run so Kurt Sorge took the chance and had an even better second run. He was finally the well-earned winner of the RedBull Rampage 2012. Cam McCaul got the best trick award for his step down backflip, by the way he was the only one who has taken the big canyon gap in the final. On the evening we had some beer at the rampage party with funny moments. Nothing more to say. What ever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas – even in Utah.
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