While the level of freeride mountain biking has never been so high, the big events are still mostly reserved for men. But women are knocking on the door of the discipline and no longer hesitate to take on the most dangerous tracks in the world.
For 20 years now, the Red Bull Rampage has been the reference competition in the world of freeride mountain biking. This year again, there were only men competing on the ochre mountains of Utah in the USA. But women are no longer satisfied with being only spectators on this kind of ultra committed event in the mountain bike world. They also ask to participate in these competitions, or at least to have a women's event organized for them.
To find the pioneers of the genre, you have to go to the United States. Most of them are women who started out on the downhill World Cup circuit, before branching out into freeride, where competitions are rarer and riders make their living producing video and content for their sponsors. This is notably the case of Katie Holden (pictured below) who has worked to ensure that women have a say in the freeride world.
"The problem with parity in this discipline probably comes from the fact that people simply couldn't imagine a woman riding on this kind of spot," she explains, citing the one at Red Bull Rampage. "Usually, it's a guy's environment. No woman had tried to ride there until then. So I went there and spent a lot of time there. I was like a sponge. I learned as much as I could."
Despite the barriers, Katie Holden has never given up, continuing to work behind the scenes over the years to give women a place in the sun in this discipline. First of all, she filmed some of her mountain bike lines on certain committed spots where, until now, only men had ridden. It was an opportunity to show that women riders could also put their wheels where men used to. In 2019, she has also launched "Formation", a freeride camp for women. The principle: the best female freeriders on the planet meet for several days on a spot and push each other, filmed by the cameras of Red Bull, partner of the event. A good way to prove women's technical skills and help them progress (see the video recap of the 2021 edition below).
The "Training" camp is the result of the work of many women who have succeeded in recent years in devoting themselves to their profession as freeriders, and are paid for it. These include Argentina's Camila Nogueira and New Zealanders Vinny Armstrong, Jess Blewitt and Casey Brown. The latter was the first woman to take part in the Red Bull Rampage qualifiers. Although she didn't make it to the final, she proved that female riders have what it takes to take on men on committed spots. "With Casey's participation in the Rampage qualifiers and the setting up of the "Formation" camp, we proved to people that women are now capable of riding here," concludes Katie Holden. "Having brought all these women out there helped show that things are ready to change."