Red Bull Hardline crashes are ten-a-penny, but what happens when you bail on a 45ft hip, built from a metal motorcross ramp?

Just watch the video above as Bernard Kerr, eventual winner of the 2016 Red Bull Rampage, has to bail on the Renegade Hip Jump during practice. Fast forward to 2.20 in this highlights video if you can’t wait for the carnage to begin.

He’s lucky to get away with it too, as Eddie Masters nearly lands right in top of him.

Bernard Kerr isn’t the only rider to come a cropper on the hip either, Mike Jones noses it in and goes over the bars.

All in all, this 9 mins 32 secs long in-depth video report of this year’s Hardline event is a very interesting watch. It goes beyond the headline-grabbing stunts and gives you more of an idea as to the event as a whole and what the riders really go through and what they think of it all.

What’s the Red Bull Hardline?

Designed and built in North Wales by Dan Atherton, the idea of Hardline is to take mountain biking on to the next level. It features tougher rock gardens, bigger drops and scarier jumps than you’d ever see in a World Cup downhill race.

Interestingly, the UCI has also just released details of  changes to World Cup Downhill mountain biking for 2017, reducing the number of riders and separating the women’s junior race from the main event.

Could this signal a gnarlier, more technically challenging World Cup series next year? Let’s hope so.

This year at Hardline Bernard Kerr won, but really it’s not about who wins or loses, but who can survive the gnarly course — just 14 riders finished out of a start list of over 20.

>>> Bernard Kerr being awesome on Surrey singletrack

Need proof? Check out course creator Dan Atherton’s finals run from his POV camera. This vid has subsequently gone viral, attracting nearly 2 million views!

Dan finished way down the pecking order at the race, in 13th place, but you’ll see why that doesn’t really matter.

It’s a course stacked with technical features like big jumps and huge drops, not to mention slippery roots and off-camber rocky sections.

We were there for the race this year and we’re happy to report there was no section of the Red Bull Hardline we’d be happy to ride!

Time for Downhill to up its game?

So does the existence of events like the Hardline mean we’ll see more, extreme downhill events? You could tell from the reactions from – and the interviews with – some of the riders at Hardline that they were loving competing away from the World Cup series.

They were loving the extremely awkward and sketchy areas of the infamous course. The sort of stuff that you would never encounter in a World Cup in a million years. We’d love to see more events like it taking place please!