Today we’re detouring into the gravity space in the lead-up to the 2024 Red Bull Rampage, the first edition of the event that will feature a women’s category. Hailey Moore shares a brief history of high-profile freeride mountain bike event and how a few of the women involved are thinking about this long-awaited milestone.
Later this week, Red Bull will host its iconic freeride mountain bike event, the 2024 Red Bull Rampage, in the desert surrounding Virgin, Utah. Since its 2001 inception, the competition has propelled the freeride movement, a sub-discipline of mountain biking in which riders compete on natural* terrain (versus machine-built trails, resort runs, or terrain parks) that has been semi-sculpted to craft creative lines.
The fact that each rider’s line is unique, in contrast to all competitors sharing a fixed course, is a defining characteristic of Rampage, as is the fact that, with the help of a few crew members, riders are responsible for digging, or shaping, their own runs in the days leading up to the competition. Think precipitous chutes and big drops, with plenty of opportunities for personal airborne flare built in, as riders plummet down the sides of towering mesas. For obvious reasons, freeride is seen as the most rugged and creative expression of the gravity sphere and Rampage the ultimate stage. And yet, it is a stage that hasn’t seen a female rider compete on until this year.
The women’s start gate at the 2024 Red Bull Rampage. Credit: Bartek Wolinski, courtesy of Red Bull.
How did we get here: An overview of women’s freeride and Red Bull Rampage
Rampage’s long-running tenure and now-vaunted reputation begs the question: why has it taken this long to get women involved? That answer varies depending on who you ask. Although the first edition was held in 2001, on the back of the burgeoning late 90s freeride movement, the Red Bull Rampage hasn’t followed a strict annual schedule, and this year will mark the 18th edition.
Decorated downhill and enduro rider, and women’s freeride icon, Casey Brown has known that she wanted to compete in Rampage since her first spectating experience, “I first watched Rampage when I was 17, back in 2008 when I was fresh out of high school,” said Brown. “Drove my van straight here because I heard that Rampage was back on after its four-year hiatus. Seeing it in real life made it so much more of a possibility and I couldn’t take my mind off it.”
Casey Brown at Red Bull Formation. Credit: Robin O’Neill (left) and Emily Tidwell (right), courtesy of Red Bull.
At that moment, Brown said she made riding Rampage a goal, though she couldn’t have imagined that it would take over 15 years to realize it. “Back when I was trying to get mountain bike sponsors, straight out of high school, all I wanted to do was be a freeride mountain biker, but there wasn’t really a path for women back then.” She explained. “One of the [goals] on my resume was: compete at Red Bull Rampage. When you’re young, you have so much more imagination and there are so many less limiting factors set up in your mind. So that kind of thinking seemed totally doable.”
Katie Holden was another woman trying to break into the freeride movement in the earlier days of Rampage. After getting into the sport through racing, Holden found herself drawn to the more adventurous side of mountain biking that freeride offered. She became a Liv media ambassador (i.e. non-racing) and picked up the mantle of growing women’s participation in mountain biking. While Holden stopped riding full-time for Liv and her other sponsors in 2018, the latter is a role she’s never let go of. Rather, over the past decade, Holden has become one of the most influential advocates for women and girls in the gravity side of cycling.
Katie Holden congratulating Casey Brown on a double drop at a Red Bull Formation event. Credit: Emily Tidwell, courtesy of Red Bull.
In a bittersweet transition, Holden has channeled the drive she had to compete in Rampage as an athlete herself, into making it a personal mission that any woman should be able to have that opportunity. In 2016, training and acquiring the media skills necessary to create her own Rampage entry video (Red Bull’s application vehicle for the event) was Holden’s sole focus. Injury ultimately sidelined her from being able to shoot the footage, but—in retrospect—Holden reflects that putting her name into consideration among the pool of male riders, in an event that was still years away from creating a women’s category, was a naive ambition.
“For a long time there had been women who were interested in riding out here and being a part of Rampage, but there was never really any recognition by Rampage, or anyone in that sphere, that [women] could ever be part of it, or be taken seriously as riders.” Holden reflected on a phone call last week. “It was like a dude’s thing. People just couldn’t fathom the idea of women riding this terrain.”
Vero Sandler stylin’ it at Red Bull Formation 2019 (left; credit: Paris Gore); Chelsea Kimball working on her line at Formation 2022 (right; credit: Re Wikstrom). Photos courtesy of Red Bull.
At that time, Holden saw Rampage as a synecdoche for freeride—and, perhaps, the umbrella of action sports—as a whole. “It was seen as this super gnarly, ‘hardcore’, hyper-masculine side of the sport and—whether they were physical or nonphysical—there were a lot of barriers around that to protect that.”
Looking back at her own attempt to gain access to this space, Holden said, “I think I naively, along perhaps with the other women who were interested in it over the years, thought that we could just be seen and they would want us to be a part of it, or that we could make a Rampage entry video and they would be like ‘oh you’re awesome, here’s your shot at Rampage’ but that couldn’t have been further from reality.”
Holden backs up this perceived inequality in a recent interview on the Second Nature podcast where she describes personal instances of experiencing pay disparity between herself and male freeride counterparts (though, she is also quick to point out instances when male athletes advocated for her). In terms of Rampage specifically, in the interview given for this article, Holden said that the subtext at that time—the mid 2010s—was that, “if a woman was selected for Rampage then that was taking away a spot from a dude who should be there. . . .You had to be on par or better than any guy who wanted to be a part of Rampage.”
Vinny Armstrong dropping in at Red Bull Formation. Credit: Emily Tidwell, courtesy of Red Bull.
As Holden recovered from a string of injuries after abandoning her 2016 Rampage entry video attempt, she said the sport experienced a period of rapid progression. And, others outside of freeride’s insular community, started to take notice. In 2017, then Red Bull athlete Rebecca Rusch traveled to Rampage for the first time to spectate the big-air theatrics. A former paddler, climber, and all-around adventure athlete, Rusch had transitioned to mountain biking in the late 2000s. In 2010, she established the SRAM Gold Rusch Tour (at which Holden was a coach), a series of events designed to make mountain biking more accessible to women after she personally felt intimidated by going into her own sponsors booths at races.
After a self-described career path of “pushing through male-dominated sports my whole life,” Rusch said that, upon witnessing the energy and excitement around the 2017 Rampage, she approached the Red Bull leadership and “asked the question that everyone was asking: why are there no women here?”
Katie Holden (left; credit: Catherine Aeppel, courtesy of Red Bull); Rebecca Rusch (right; courtesy of Rebecca Rusch)
In 2018, a round-table discussion followed including Rusch, Holden, other acclaimed female mountain bike athletes Leigh Donovan and Jill Kintner, Red Bull execs and Rampage event personnel, and a few male athletes from the Red Bull roster. One reason given for the lack of a women’s category at Rampage from the Red Bull perspective was that there wasn’t a clear pathway for women to progress—and prove themselves—in freeride and amass the experience necessary to ride Rampage-level terrain.
Male athletes that had been formative in the development of Rampage also cited the grassroots efforts they’d put in—organizing jam-session style, athlete-run events, digging for other Rampage riders—to build the community around freeride. In short, the feeling was: nobody is going to hand this to you, the women need to put in their time.
Casey Brown; Utah, May 2022. Credit: Robin O’Neill, courtesy of Red Bull.
Arguably, athletes like Brown (who had, at this point, had her sights set on Rampage for a decade) and Holden had been pushing their own riding in hopes of gaining recognition in freeride. But how could the focus on individual women shift towards growing women’s freeride as a whole? It’s at this point where the question of responsibility for at least opportunity arises: although Red Bull had been benefiting from the growth of men’s freeride for nearly two decades, the brand seemed hesitant to risk investing in the women’s side of the sport.
Chelsea Kimball, an athlete now known for her quick progression in freeride and dedication to logging lots of time in Virgin, though not present at that round table, said on a recent call that she could see Red Bull’s side. “Red Bull definitely has a responsibility—should they have created a women’s category earlier and just hoped that there were enough women that could fill that category? Maybe.”
Chelsea Kimball digging at Red Bull Rampage 2024 (left; credit: Bartek Wolinski) and hitting her drop at Formation 2021 (right; credit: Re Wikstrom). Photos courtesy of Red Bull.
Kimball continued:
“[But] making an entire category, then having the possibility of having only four women who want to compete? That is a major expense, and so risky on their part. Do they need to create the category first and then the women’s field will grow? Or, should we make sure we have the women’s field and then they create the category? I don’t know which is right or wrong. I do like recognizing that it’s both the responsibilities of the event creators and the athletes to advocate for themselves. I want women to succeed, but I don’t want them to succeed where they are allowed to succeed; I want them to fight for themselves and fight for what they want, not wait for opportunities.”
Since that 2018 round table discussion, it seems like the dedication on the part of the women leading the charge in expanding freeride has been unwavering; Red Bull’s commitment has felt shakier. After that pivotal gathering, Katie Holden and Chris Worden teamed up to create a Red Bull supported incubator event for women: Red Bull Formation.
The Red Bull Formation 2019 crew. Credit: Paris Gore, courtesy of Red Bull.
An invite-only event, Formation ran for three editions from 2019-2022 (no event was held in 2020). With its non-competitive format, Formation was founded on giving women the tools they needed to progress in mountain biking, from a skills and a business perspective. Held on the same formidable red-dirt terrain as Rampage in Utah, Formation gave the women attendees more experience digging through reconstructing former Rampage lines, then sessioning the features as a group. Off the bike, Formation provided the participants an opportunity to discuss sponsorship negotiations and other hurdles they’d encountered along the professional athlete career track. It is still unclear if Formation was viewed as an explicit stepping stone to a future women’s Rampage, or an end unto itself.
What is undeniable is that Formation fast-tracked the women’s freeride movement, through media exposure from the event itself, and the ripple effects it had in the wider industry. Since Formation’s first year, more women have started hosting their own events and larger industry events have since opened to women.
The desert delivers. Credit: Catherine Aeppel (left), Emily Tidwell (right), courtesy of Red Bull.
In 2023, Formation’s momentum set off murmurings through the community: Formation was transitioning to a competition format; Red Bull might be creating a women’s category at Rampage. But then, like a rooster tail whipped up in the exhilaration of a flowy run, the dust settled, leaving nothing in its wake. Not only would Formation not move to a competitive event, it was canceled altogether. Rampage 2023 came and went, the women still left waiting.
Amidst the disappointment of a canceled Formation, Chelsea Kimball organized a similar gathering in the fall of 2023, Desert Days, an open-to-all-women styled event. She said that although there were “so many women bummed about Formation being canceled,” she hoped that “get[ting] more women to ride in Virgin and keep coming back will have a multiplying effect.”
Camila Nogueria steps down into the snake pit at Red Bull Formation. Credit: Emily Tidwell, courtesy of Red Bull.
Rampage for Women Arrives
In summer of this year, Red Bull finally announced that eight women would be joining Rampage for the 2024 event. The women will kick off the big show on Thursday October 10th, riding on terrain not previously featured in past editions. The men will follow on Saturday October 12th in a different area; notably, there will be 18 male competitors.
The final list of female competitors includes both Brown (CAN) and Kimball (USA; originally listed as an alternate), along with Camila Nogueira (ARG), Georgia Astle (CAN; also an alternate initially), Robin Goomes (NZL), Vaea Verbeeck (CAN), Vero Sandler (UK), and Vinny Armstrong (NZL).
Cami Nogueira (left); Georgia Astle (right). Credit: Catherine Aeppel, courtesy of Red Bull.
On what it means to finally be able to perform on the biggest freeride stage, Brown said, “It means so much for me to be in the first women’s Rampage. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be 10 [more] years from now—it’s hard to say when decisions are being made so much higher up than you. Hearing the news that Rampage was going to be this year, I was over the moon, I was so stoked to start training for it, and so stoked on all the girls that have been out there digging.”
The Argentine rider Nogueira also referenced just how unreachable this opportunity previously seemed for women; “I remember watching Rampage when I was like 12 years old. When I was really young, I didn’t dream about this because there wasn’t a women’s category; everything was so far from reality that I never thought about it. I think that maybe three years ago is when I really started to think about it.”
Vaea Verbeeck (left; credit: Sterling Lorence); Robin Goomes (right; credit: Jo Osborne). Photos courtesy of Red Bull.
Astle, for her part, has lived the progression that Red Bull representatives made the case for back at that 2018 round table. “It’s really awesome being able to progress into this position, from being a digger at Formation, then a rider, and now being in the first Rampage—it’s pretty special. I felt like the pressure was maybe lifted because we had [2023] off of anything happen. There was a little time for us to simmer and be ok with where we are at in our riding. It almost felt like it was sprung upon us, which was maybe best-case scenario. We weren’t planning it out for a whole year, so that worked out better for my headspace. It was a little crazy being an alternate then being put into the list.”
One shadow of uncertainty lingering over this year’s Rampage is the fact that there is no foreseeable future where Formation is reinstated. Will the momentum it generated be enough to keep sustaining women’s freeride progression? As Holden tells it, “One of the things that Formation did was help build this bridge to Rampage and now there are a handful of women on the other side of that bridge, but we need to keep building it for others.”
Vero Sandler (left); Vinny Armstrong (right). Credit: Bartek Wolinski, courtesy of Red Bull
Rusch believes that the biggest obstacle for continued growth and parity in sport remains at the highest levels, “Women in sport are experiencing a long-awaited tidal wave of momentum and energy and opportunity. This is happening across all sports [. . .] Women are taking part in sports in huge numbers—that participation has been building for a couple of decades. What’s different now is the exposure, the media, and the opportunities that can’t be ignored. There is critical mass in participation and now the rest is falling into place. The one area I still see lacking for women in sport is at the leadership level, like coaching, executive positions, and leadership. We’re still gravely outnumbered here and that is the last arena that needs to shift.”
The take-off, Virgin, UT. Credit: Natalie Starr, courtesy of Red Bull.
As for Kimball, she plans to continue building inclusion energy around freeride post-Rampage. She has stated that Desert Days will be returning in Spring 2026 as an open video competition for both women and men. As for her what she’s most looking forward to in Virgin? “I want to go out there and build a line that I’m excited by and proud to ride,” she said. “Then have a good clean top-to-bottom run, then celebrate with all the ladies because I want them to have the same thing. I’ve thought so much about what the feeling will be once we’ve all finished our first runs; I think there will just be so much celebration.”
*From The Radavist editors: Although freeride claims to ride on “natural terrain” there is no denying that the very nature of the discipline and laborious digging that takes place ahead of Rampage stand at odds with Leave No Trace principles. The Radavist is a firm supporter of LNT and we promote a “Shred Lightly” approach to the outdoors. But, in this instance, we wanted to take this opportunity to cover a pivotal moment in women’s sport. To learn more about why we advocate for LNT, please watch our film, “From Bio Crust, With Love.”
