No Winner at Rampage: Right Call, Wrong Plan

Red Bull Rampage, Rampage 2026, Red Bull Rampage 2026, Rampage canceled, freeride mountain biking, mountain biking

Twenty-five years of Red Bull Rampage, a return to the original 2001 site, and nobody on top of the box. Wind shut down the men’s final in round one. Bad luck or bad planning? The comment sections have picked a side. We don’t think it’s that simple.

by Robert Langer

This was supposed to be the birthday party. For its 25th edition, Rampage went back to where it all started, the ridges outside Virgin, Utah. Seventeen riders lined up for the men’s final on Saturday, October 10. Seven of them never got to drop. After roughly two and a half hours of waiting on a wind window, organizers pulled the plug, the first time in Rampage history the show has been called in the opening round. And because not everyone got a run, nobody got a result: there is no 2026 men’s Rampage champion.

How the day came apart

Szymon Godziek was sitting comfortably on top with a 90.00, ahead of Jaxson Riddle (85.87) and Rampage rookie Kade Edwards (84.12), who still went home with the Style award. Carson Storch went down hard in a steep chute and was flown out by helicopter. The good news: he was checked out, discharged with no broken bones and back at the venue the same day, where his fellow riders voted him the Kelly McGarry Spirit Award.

Then the wind showed up. Cam Zink, Tomas Lemoine, Tom van Steenbergen and defending champ Hayden Zablotny were among the riders left standing at the top. Red Bull says gusts from nearby storm cells topped 20 mph at times. That doesn’t sound like much until you picture floating a canyon gap with a crosswind nudging you off the landing.

So why doesn’t Godziek’s 90 count? Apparently the title only goes out if every rider had a shot at a run. That rule was explained on the broadcast, mid-delay. You won’t find it in a public rulebook, because there isn’t one. For the biggest freeride contest on the planet, that’s a strange gap.

Why the comment sections exploded

Almost nobody is arguing with the call itself. The anger is about the run-up. The remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel had been on the forecast for days, with stronger winds flagged for Saturday as early as October 6. The response was to move the men’s start up by exactly one hour, from 10 to 9 a.m. local time. Friday, the open day between Thursday’s women’s final and Saturday, went unused.

The sharpest version of the critique came from people who know the event from the inside. One team manager who says he was on site in 2015 with several riders summed it up roughly like this: nobody questions safety on the day, the problem is there was no Plan B for weather everybody could see coming. Plenty of fans pointed to pro surfing and the Freeride World Tour, where contests run inside a multi-day waiting period and go when conditions line up. And spectators who paid for tickets, flights and motel rooms in southern Utah are still waiting on any kind of gesture.

There’s another camp, though, and it’s noticeably full of people who were actually there. The mood on the hill, they say, was close to unanimous: nobody wanted to see anyone drop in those gusts. Locals describe the storm that followed as brutal, with flooding and washed-out roads. Others point out that many diggers burn vacation days to shovel for two weeks, and some reportedly aren’t paid at all. Asking them to stick around another week isn’t free.

„Canceling was the right call. Getting to the point where it was the only call was not.“

Todd Barber’s side of the story

Todd Barber, who founded Rampage 25 years ago and still runs it, laid out his reasoning in an interview two days later. Some of it lands. Organizers moved a final forward once before, in 2015, and he says the athletes were seriously unhappy about it. This time, he asked the two elected athlete reps on Wednesday whether Friday was an option. The answer came back a firm no. Some lines weren’t finished until Friday evening, and many riders were hitting full top-to-bottom runs for the first time the night before finals.

He also describes things the stream never showed. About an hour after the cancellation, two lightning strikes hit within eight miles, which by protocol means clearing the venue anyway. Sand and debris blew into the lines like a blizzard, and the hosts‘ broadcast set was lifted nearly 50 feet. Around 2,000 spectators were on site. A make-up day? After days of rain, the hand-built takeoffs and landings would have needed serious rebuilding, and pushing back a full week, he says, just isn’t realistic for an event this size.

The part getting the most attention is about the future. Rampage, Barber says, is always a year-by-year decision: do the athletes want it, is there a viable site, does it still make sense for Red Bull and its budget. Organizers hope to run it again next year. That’s not a yes. And it’s worth remembering how hard the 25th was to pull off: BLM permits for the original site took close to two years of work and only came through on August 21.

Our take

Calling it was right. Full stop. Running freeride at this scale in gusting wind is gambling with riders‘ health, and at an event where helicopter evacuations are almost part of the program, safety isn’t an excuse. It’s the job.

But Barber’s plea for less negativity misses the point. Criticizing the planning isn’t negativity. A storm that’s on the radar a week out isn’t fate, it’s a planning scenario. Asking two reps a hypothetical on Wednesday is not the same as building a weather day into the schedule from day one and telling every team about it. A real event window costs money and time, no question. A scrapped final that 17 crews spent two weeks digging for costs something that’s much harder to buy back: credibility.

And let’s not bury the actual headline of this Rampage. On Thursday, New Zealand’s Robin Goomes scored a 93.50 to win her third straight title, edging out Hannah Bergemann. What the women’s field is riding now would have sounded like fantasy a few years ago. This year’s champions were crowned. They just rode on Thursday.

What it means for your next park day

You’re not building a line in the Utah desert. But you know wind. On an exposed jump line, a ridge trail or the top of the bike park, one gust at the wrong moment can push you sideways in the air or tuck your front wheel. The bigger the jump, the longer you’re airborne and the more surface the wind has to work with.

When it’s gusty, skip the big hits and take the B-line.
Be extra careful on exposed ridges and open slopes. Down in the trees it’s often way calmer.
Check the forecast before a park day and look at gust speeds, not just average wind.
Saying no is a skill. Nobody has to hit every feature just because the crew does.

As one rider put it in a thread after the cancellation, more or less: in action sports, no is never the wrong answer, but yes sometimes is. That goes for Virgin, and it goes for your local jump line.

Will there be a Rampage in 2027? Nobody knows yet. We hope so. Ideally with a weather window.

Published by Radical Life Studios / MTB Report