Take a a couple of minutes to watch the winning runs from Wader Simmons, Tyler Klassen and Cedric Gracia. Witness the move from sketch to skills.

>>> In these 11 minutes you will learn more than you have learned in the last two years

It’s Rampage week this week. So get ready for all your mountain bike streams becoming very diggy, deserty and dramatic.

For today’s rose-tinted retro Rampage we’re looking back (courtesy of Red Bull) to the very first days of Rampage. Namely 2001, 2002 and 2003.

The era when the freeride movement moved from VHS/DVD sales and into online coverage and competition.

The first Red Bull Rampage events featured very little in the way of tricks. Sure, there were gaps and drops but there was nothing like there is today. No spins, suicide no-handers or backflips. The very first couple of Rampages were very clearly just about getting down the mountain without coming off your bike.

The first couple of years of rampage saw very little in the way of line building or even much in the way of grooming a line.

Just look at the terrain in the first two winning runs in the video above. You can tell someone’s brake-dragged once or twice their way down the lines that they’re riding but that’s about it.

Yet, already by the third Rampage in 2003, you can see that things quickly evolved from the rough and ready years.

Cedric Gracia’s 2003 winning run – backpack and all – looks hugely more polished and poised than Simmons’ and Klassen’s. His line is slighlty wider, cleaner and with more promo Red Bull flags planted in it than ever before.

Some folk may think that Rampage’s return with all the wooden Oakley-plastered ramps was the time when Rampage changed. But it was arguably the moment Cedric pinned that backflip in 2003 was the exact moment that Red Bull Rampage was never the same again. For better of for worse, Rampage became slopestyle and left trad freeride behind.

We still love it though.

Red Bull Rampage 2019

When: Friday October 25, 5pm UK

Watch it: redbull.com/us-en/events/rampage

Who:
Andreu Lacondeguy
Brandon Semenuk
Carson Storch
Thomas Genon
Szymon Godziek
Emil Johansson
Brett Rheader
Reed Boggs
Cam Zink
Tom van Steenbergen
Kyle Strait
Kurt Sorge
Tyler McCaul
Graham Agassiz
Vincent Tupin
Reece Wallace
Ethan Nell
Bienve Aguado Alba