Photos by Photos by Hanna Retz Photography, Sterling Lorence Photography, and Anthill Films / Jonathan Osborne
Mountain biking needs Rampage. We need spectacle. We need drama. We need events that embody our sport's pioneering and chaotic roots. But we also need Rampage to evolve.
When freeriding started encompassing more technical aerial tricks, Rampage lines started sprouting more manicured lips and landings. Then, evolving again, enormous wooden features came into favor, changing Rampage lines and flavor. But when those features fell out of style, Rampage returned to the dirt for another new look and feel.
And now, Rampage is evolving again.
In case you’ve been living under a giant flaky red rock, 2024 will be the first year for women to perform on freeride’s ultimate stage. But this is far from the first time women have been a part of freeride’s legacy. Mountain biking legends like Carys Evans and Missy Giove were sending it since we first borrowed the term from skiing. And then, recently, there's been a steep acceleration in the veracity and visibility of women’s freeride.
Nobody knows this better than Katie Holden, who has been the driving force behind this year’s historic expansion of the Rampage rider roster. A freeriding pioneer in her own right, Holden helped create Red Bull Formation, a women’s freeride event series staged on the very same cliffs of the 2008-2013 Rampage event. There, six prodigious female freeriders and their dig teams built new lines, resurrected old ones, and sent it in spectacular style. That was in 2019, and a lot has happened since then.
“2019 was a big year in general,” says Holden. “That’s when Vero Sandler made her Vision film, and Casy Brown was the first woman in Proving Grounds. Then there was Formation."
Formation was not built as a competition. It was a way for women to learn the Rampage ropes and quite a bit more in the process. "Formation gave people the opportunity, tools, and resources to excel in that specific environment, but also a place to share knowledge," Holden explains. "Then, after 2019, it kinda flipped a switch.”
In the years since the first Formation, women's categories have been added to an increasing number of slopestyle- and freeride-adjacent events. Women have been invited to showcase their skills on the monolithic jumps of Dark Fest and Nines, the high-speed cannons of Hardline, and finally, Rampage itself. Red Bull is providing the female competitors the same appearance fees as the male competitors and will be awarding them the same size prize package. This is the real deal.
The women will be dropping in on Thursday, October 10th. Although each Rampage run may only last two minutes, the event itself is often an all-day affair. Logistics around filming and judging require extra time between runs. And there needs to be some wiggle room in case riders have to wait for the wind to die down. That’s why Red Bull decided to dedicate an entire day to women’s Rampage. In fact, they dedicated an entire location. It’ll take another day for the whole circus to pull up stakes and move over to the men’s event, which will be held the following Saturday.
All told, eight female riders will be competing, and Shimano is proud to be supporting three of them including Vaea Verbeeck, Vinny Armstrong, and Robin Goomes – all of whom also appeared in the latest immersive MTB film by Anthill Films, Anytime, which highlights some of the world’s best freeride mountain bikers as they redefine the frontiers of the sport. Playing an important role in the women’s freeride movement on screen with Anytime, Vaea, Vinny, and Robin now set their sights on another important step forward for women’s freeride at Rampage. We caught up with these athletes to chat about where they've been, where they're going, and, of course, who's on their dig team.
Vaea Verbeeck
Vaea Verbeeck’s first mountain bike was a downhill bike. And her first race was a junior national championship – at Mont-Sainte-Anne, no less – where the rocks are plentiful and the flow is scarce. But it must have suited her just fine because she ended up taking second that day. In the decade that followed, she became a major player in World Cup DH, but her back-to-back Queen of Crankworx titles may best represent Verbeeck's current approach to the sport.
"From the get-go, I was submerged in downhill racing culture," Verbeeck tells us. "But I started to see racers bringing flair and style. And hopping off the downhill bike and getting on a dirt jumper." Adopting that approach helped earn Verbeeck her Crankworx crowns, winning golds in dual slalom, air DH, and good old-fashioned downhill. "It's nice to be able to prioritize whatever brings you the most happiness on a bike," Verbeeck says.
Recently, that's meant sending the enormous jumps at Dark Fest, charging the harrowing gaps at Hardline, joining the pioneering athletes of Formation, and soon dropping in at Rampage. But a machine-built jump line is not the same as the raw cliffs of Virgin, Utah. "On features like what's in Hardline, you're able to watch someone hit it. Then, it's just a matter of theory. Where's the speed check? Or the brake point? Or how much to pull up?" Verbeeck explains. "Rampage is gonna be a whole other ballgame."
To help prepare the playing field, Verbeeck has chosen a dig team of young up-and-comers. "I want my whole concept to be about the promising growth of the event and of the sport. So, as my digging crew, I've brought up a few aspiring Rampage riders." That would be UK Import, Jim Monroe, and Utah snowbird, Aiden Parish. "Both those guys are in their late teens or early 20s." Verbeeck believes each of them has the potential to compete someday, but her third digger might have a head start. "I also have Georgia Astle. She's my long-time friend, and she's actually on the alternate list. So, I hope she gets in for herself, but if not, I want her to get as much hands-on experience with Rampage as possible.”
True to form, Verbeeck and her crew are looking to assemble a diverse and well-rounded run. "I would love my line to be exactly the way I like things to be, which is full of variety. I want it to maybe use the terrain and get creative on a rock feature or hop on and off of a ridge. I would love it to have some high-speed flow so I can bring some more sizable features." Verbeeck seems ready for whatever her team encounters out there. "We'll have to see what we can come up with, but it makes you excited to talk about it, which is a really good sign."
Vinny Armstrong
We won’t make any predictions about who will stand atop the podium once this year’s cloud of orange dust settles, but we think Vinny Armstrong is a contender for the Rampage People’s Choice Award. Sure, she’s already stood on plenty of podiums in racing and freeride events across the globe. But she’s probably best known for her effortless style. Armstrong rides the way we all wish we could. She makes everything look easy.
Originally from Auckland, New Zealand, Armstrong started riding mountain bikes at a young age, taking regular weekend trips to the bike park with her brother, Sam. That was just a few hours from Rotorua, where she would later build an impressive record in DH racing. But her breakout event was the Crankworx Whip-Off. For the past few years, Armstrong has been nearly unbeatable on the getting-sideways circuit. It’s quite a treat to see that signature steeze on full display. Maybe that’s why Armstrong has been landing some highly cinematic shred edits lately.
It's really fun because I get full creative control,” Armstrong says. “I can make it how I want. I can choose where I want to shoot. I can get really weird and artsy with it." Videos are an important outlet for athletes like Armstrong, who are making a name for themselves outside the racing scene. A recent example is "Shimmer," which opens on some big jumps in Kamloops, British Columbia … Or, rather, we thought they were big. But we forgot who we were talking to.
“It was a nice little session, that one,” Armstrong laughs. “It's fun to go back to the smaller jumps and work on style. Doing things off the lip and being more comfortable. Then, you can transition it into the bigger stuff.” Armstrong now lives in Queenstown, where there are heaps of “big stuff” to ride. And she’s a veteran of Dark Fest and Proving Grounds, which feature some of the biggest stuff around. Then there are her Formation runs, which combined impossibly steep raw chutes and ludicrous-speed long-distance senders.
“In the desert, you can pick your line. You can choose the kind of features you want to build to better suit your riding,” Armstrong explains. “But it gets pretty gnarly. You have to have trust in your own building and in your build crew.” Her brother, Sam, happens to be a member of her crew, so she’s probably pretty dialed in the trust department. “I honestly just want to go and have fun on my bike.” Armstrong’s description of her Rampage plans makes her superhuman aspirations feel almost approachable. "I want to go build something where I can have the most fun and really showcase my riding style."
Speaking of style, Armstrong is one of the many Rampage riders running a "mini mullet" 26 rear / 27.5 front wheel size. But it's relatively new for her. "I only just put it on a few weeks ago to give it a try. Normally, I would run dual 27.5 because, especially when traveling, my freeride bike is my everything bike. But I put the 26 on, and it's insane. I don't think I'm gonna go back.” Armstrong’s new setup has us all the more excited for her signature effortlessness to be on full display at this year’s Rampage. “I like a smaller bike in general. It lets me move the bike around in any which direction, especially off the lip. It pops instantly into the shape that I want to make.” Somehow, she even makes it sound easy. We can’t wait to see it.
Robin Goomes
For most of us, there’s plenty of thrill in simply hitting a few jumps. Anyone who needs to throw more than a decent-looking whip must be doing it for the judges … right? Well, if you talk to Robin Goomes, you'll see a drive to master tricks that isn't about checking boxes. It comes from within and persists long after all runs are finished and all the scores are counted.
Goomes discovered mountain bikes through friends in the New Zealand Army. She served for five years, operating machines, learning trades, and even being stationed in Antarctica for a time. But soon after, she dove headfirst into the sport, working for a full-service guiding outfit south of Rotorua before a brief stint of van life in the mecca of Queenstown.
It has some of the sickest jump lines,” Goomes says with wide eyes and a wider smile. “And there’s just good riding and good community.” But when we reached her, Goomes was in her current home of Rotorua. "The mountain biking here is good. The forest is good for trail riding." Except that's not why Goomes is here. “The cost of living is way more reasonable, and the goal is to get some land and set up a proper training compound so I can actually train hard.”
Goomes has good reason to want a backyard setup. Although her first steps into competitive mountain biking were in enduro and DH, she very quickly started making moves in slopestyle and freeride. Literally making moves, in fact. In 2021, she became the first woman to pull a backflip in Crankworx competition history. Then, just a few months later, she was doing highly technical flip combo tricks at Audi Nines (now Swatch Nines). 2021 had a lot of highlights for Goomes, not the least of which was her first time in Utah dirt attending Formation as an alternate.
She returned to Formation in 2022 as a participant. Her run was peak Robin Goomes. If her enormous no-hander drop doesn’t make you weep, her backflip finisher surely will. But there were also some knife-edge ridge rides and complex drops. She’s hoping to create the same sort of mix at Rampage.
“Yeah, I’ve got a bag of tricks that I want to get into my run. But I also want to showcase some lesser-known sides of my riding. I feel like I can ride the tech stuff and have big hits." The dig team behind that effort will be drawn from all over the globe, including Europe, Canada, and, of course, New Zealand. "I feel like a team manager or something," Goomes tells us. “Where I’m managing a bunch of different people and where in the world they came from.”
And that's just one of the many reasons why this year's Rampage is so unique. It's proving that these riders can handle not only the terrain of Rampage, but also its legacy. "For this to be the first year and to be a part of that is really special. I feel like my timing to be on the planet right now is just so perfect," Robin Goomes tells us. “It’s so sick.”
