Fearless femmes get their due

Goomes during the final practice day at Red Bull Rampage in Virgin, Utah. Traditionally, only men were invited to the scariest and most lucrative event in mountain biking, but this year, women shared equally in the adrenaline and prizes. — Photos: ©2024 The New York Times Company

THE women were competing, finally, at Red Bull Rampage, considered the biggest and gnarliest mountain bike competition in the world. At the bottom, Katie Holden was overcome by the moment.

For years, Holden, a 39-year-old mountain bike athlete and advocate, had led the push for this gender barrier to fall.

Now it had, in the desert near Zion National Park in Utah.

“Women are in Rampage now,” she said, soaking in those words and smiling through tears. “This is all we wanted.”

Rampage, a chart-your-own course “freeride” event, began in 2001. But it was only for men, and it stayed that way as it grew into the sport’s most feared, most anticipated spectacle.

Last month, it became the latest athletic setting where women finally had equal access and pay.

To know why this matters, simply follow the dusty trails of blood, sweat and tears that tumbled down the craggy, crumbling sandstone slopes.

Rampage can be both exhilarating and horrifying – including for viewers – as riders fly down steep drops and over big jumps while carving turns at the edges of cliffs.

The first down was Robin Goomes, a 28-year-old from New Zealand.

The day before, she had wondered aloud whether the reluctance to include women at Rampage was rooted in the audaciousness of it all and in a testosterone-fuelled notion that the presence of women would diminish the brashness and make Rampage “look less gnarly”.

“It’s actually pretty psycho when you look at it,” she said.

If Goomes felt the weight of the moment, she did not show it.

She navigated a series of rocky, technical sections and a couple of gut-sinking drops. She performed two backflips off jumps. She reached the finish, leaped off her bike and was given the highest score of the event.

Her prize was US$100,000, the same as for the men who competed two days later and bigger than any other payout in the sport.

Goomes drinking champagne from a shoe after winning Red Bull Rampage in Utah. — ©2024 The New York Times Company

Then came Casey Brown, a 33-year-old Canadian, maybe the best known of the growing freeride mountain bike sorority.

She had spent years fighting for a spot at Rampage, for herself and others, and would finish third in the competition.

“Women are tough as nails,” she said. “It’s a shame that most of the time we want to do something, we have to ask men for permission.”

Soon came Georgia Astle, 27, another Canadian.

She navigated a steep gully that she and others christened the “Chuterus”, though race officials publicly labelled it “Chutes ‘R’ Us”. It was a tight downhill passage leading to a tricky exit and toward even more frightening obstacles.

Astle beamed when she reached the bottom of her run, finishing in second place.

“We have kicked the door down,” she said.

Then she texted her mother to tell her that she was OK.

In the end, all of them were – even Cami Nogueira of Argentina, who dropped out of the contest after a nasty face-plant in practice left her with a concussion, a broken nose and a dozen stitches that marched up from her lip.

Still, she smiled and hugged each of her friends as they reached the bottom – which is to say, when women finally got to the top.

Crash test dummies

In professional mountain biking, Rampage is different. Part of it is the setting, on the eroding slopes near Gooseberry Mesa, a massive butte and mountain biking mecca that rises high over the desert floor.

Part of it is the unique format. Each year, a small number of invited competitors are given a starting point and a finish line, separated by hundreds of vertical metres of cliffs, gullies and unforgiving sun-baked terrain.

Using imagination, shovels and a couple of good friends – there are no chairlifts or rides to the top, so even the bikes must be carried up the mountain – contestants spend a week building trails, berms and jumps.

Then they serve as their own crash test dummies for a few days. How fast do I need to hit that jump to cross the canyon and reach the landing? After that free-fall drop, can I slow down enough to keep from flying off a cliff?

The goal is to impress a panel of five judges with creativity, boldness and fluidity. It is also to survive.

No one has died at Rampage, but at least one competitor has been paralysed in a fall.

Helicopters are on hand to fly the injured to an area hospital, if needed. And they have been needed, including once during the men’s competition. (Defending champion Cam Zink sustained six broken ribs and a collapsed lung.)

Danger did not stop women from wanting to participate. Just the opposite.

Vaea Verbeeck rides a chute at Red Bull Rampage. — ©2024 The New York Times Company

Women have been part of mountain biking since the beginning, of course. And as various events and circuits have expanded around the world, including at the Olympics, they have been welcomed as equals. But Rampage was an invitational event, and it was not inviting women.

Todd Barber was a founder of Rampage in 2001 and still oversees it in partnership with Red Bull. Why did it take until 2024 to invite women?

“I don’t think we were ever holding out,” Barber said. “It just takes time. We needed to make sure it was done right.”

Barber said that the delay was a matter of logistics, not sexism. Women and men would need two separate “venues”, as he called the vast terrains where athletes built trails and rode, and which often changed from year to year.

More space and athletes would mean more infrastructure, more money, more staffers. It would mean acquiring proper permits (the event takes place on public land) and figuring out how to televise and stream it all.

Holden and others persisted, backed by public pressure. They resisted calls to simply create a similar, separate contest, wanting the eyeballs and respect that came only with Rampage.

They formally asked for inclusion and equal prize money.

Long story short: They got it this year.

“It’s 2024,” Astle said. “And the stigma of girls doing the most extreme sports is a thing of the past.”

A roller coaster of fear

Vaea Verbeeck performs a drop at Red Bull Rampage. — ©2024 The New York Times Company

Each athlete builds her own course (rules allowed for a three-person crew of “diggers”), meaning she could create as much risk as she was willing to endure.

“It’s a roller coaster of fear,” Goomes said the day before the contest. She laughed. “For sure it’s the scariest stuff I’ve ever done.”

On contest day, after a two-hour delay for wind, she went first.

“Red Bull Rampage, you just witnessed history!” a public-address announcer shouted as Goomes completed her run.

Every female competitor dropped into the void, into the embrace of fans. It was just what the women had wanted all along: to be included, to be tested, to be supported.

In the crowd was Michelle Parker, a professional freeskier. She carves her way down mountains in snow, much the way that the bikers were doing in the dirt.

Freeskiing, she said, was a few years ahead on the gender curve. She wanted to show support as mountain bikers had their moment.

“I think a lot of men didn’t think women were ready,” Parker said. “But who are they to say we’re not ready?”

It was an echo of the questions raised by Brown, maybe the most famous of female mountain bikers. Why are men the gatekeepers?

It was suggested that younger generations of girls could now, finally, imagine themselves at Rampage, but Brown quickly expanded the intended audience.

“It’s also for all the boys and men out there,” she said. “It’s one more thing for them to give us a bit more respect.” — ©2024 The New York Times Company