Our roving American reporter Fahzure Freeride is out at Red Bull Rampage feeding you Instagram stories from behind the scenes. Among all the young dudes and dirtbags there, he was glad to find someone older himself: none other than Gary Fisher. Having got his attention by shouting “Hey! You’re the only guy here older than me!”, they caught up for a quick chat, at what it turns out is Fisher’s first ever Red Bull Rampage.
You can listen here, or read the transcript below.
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Fahzure: Gary, I’m working for Singletrack Magazine, that’s the UK publication – you probably know Chipps?
GF: Yeah, absolutely!
Fahzure: Do you wanna say hi to Chipps?
GF: Hi Chipps! I hope all is well, good health to you sir!
Fahzure: So how many Rampages have you been to?
GF: This is the first one
Fahzure: Your first Rampage!
GF: Yeah!
Fahzure: And what do you think about this place?
GF: I love this place! The dirt is a sculptor’s dream for one thing, and the back end of this operation is very professional. The riders, these people are not crazy one little bit. They are extremely focused and dedicated. These are good kids. They show up on time, they don’t insult their fans, and they clean up their own messes.
Fahzure: I don’t wanna say that you sound like an old man… but you sound like an old man. And so, really, what were you expecting?!
GF: I kept an open mind, and I’ll tell you I’ve always watched it and I love it. And I love what the producers at Red Bull have been able to pull off in order to make this a good exciting sport. I mean it’s a good television property now. I mean, it was painful to watch mountain biking racing in the old days. I mean painful. It was great to do and painful to watch on TV, and they flipped that around. I mean this is really good stuff.
Fahzure: One thing, there are no trees. We got no trees here so you can see the course basically top to bottom, right?
GF: Yeah that’s correct. I mean there’s a lot of things that make it work, you know. What’s interesting, a lot of these guys were saying “Oh yeah, when you come up here you can’t believe how big it is”, and I’ve got up here and went “Well actually it looks bigger on the TV a little bit!” but believe me I mean there’s plenty of opportunity – gravity opportunity – here. Absolutely. And I just love watching the skill of the riders and the skill of the trail builders.
Fahzure: What you were saying before is really, the opportunity to see it behind-the-scenes allows you to see how carefully considered everything is here, and we were talking a moment ago about geometry. What do you think about the geometry of this place? The land, the geometry of the runs?
GF: I think it’s absolutely correct for what we’re doing here. You know for the contest this totally makes sense. You’ve got to have some serious gravity. It’s really cool to get totally vertical and then pull it out of vertical back into horizontal and to get air and do the tricks. You know, man! This stuff! I mean it’s absolutely intoxicating to me. I love it. This is a part of mountain biking that I never really expected. I thought for sure the cross country thing would work because it was really fun and adventure, but man I love the next level that this has all been taken to and I’m really glad that we as a company are involved. I’m really glad to be involved in this.
Fahzure: So do I hear that you’re excited about gravity riding generally and Enduro and what that kind of a sport does for mountain biking?
GF: Oh absolutely. I mean come on man. I mean I won the first downhill races. I loved that stuff, it was scary as could be, but man, it was really exciting. I loved it.
Fahzure: But really you have roadie roots right?
GF: Absolutely roadie roots! I still I’m a much better road rider rather than I am a mountain biker in a way these days.
Fahzure: We won’t hold that against you!
GF: Its okay! I still ride a lot. It’s alright, I’m fine
Fahzure: It’s just so scary and dangerous! (Pauses) The skinny tires!
GF: Oh yeah, I agree!
(Fahzure laughs)
GF: Yeah you’ve got to have your act together to do it. It’s a different animal, it’s a big social thing, it gets weird at times, but I don’t care.
Fahzure: What are you excited about right now in kinda the mountain biking community, the mountain biking culture here in the US?
GF: Well we are sort of the stewards of the trail. It’s sort of amazing. You know there’s nobody else puts in as much work as mountain bikers do in the outdoors in the United States. It’s funny I mean the laws that have come around lately that we can go on all of this federal land all of a sudden, you can take and e-mountain bike out there. Wow that was sort of unexpected. But at the same time, we’ve got the kids, they love to do it. I want to make a better place for my kids and their kids and everything and mountain biking is part of the whole program. It really is.
Fahzure: Have you spent much time on an e-MTB?
GF: A fair amount of time, mostly over in Europe. I don’t own one at home but… they are way too much fun, that’s what’s crazy. It’s a lot of fun. It removes a lot of barriers to entry and we’re going to get a lot more people involved in the sport. Period. And then there’s the guys like I talk to the police officers – they love the idea of e-bikes. They like the e-mountain bike just because it’s robust. And then there’s there’s the forest service guys. The forest service guys – I’ll talk to them and say look this is going to be the cheapest way for you to get around you your properties, and in a lot of cases the fastest way. And here’s a thing they get really excited about: when I say to them “you’re going to be able to hear your victim”. Because they go out in a helicopter, an ATV, a motorcycle… with a motorcycle or ATV they’ve got to shut off the engine, helicopter they don’t have any choice.They can’t hear somebody screaming. On an e-MTB you can. That’s an amazing thing. So this is going to be a real tool for stewards of the outdoors, it’s going to be respected and properly regulated. Because it still needs to be regulated, as everything does. I mean we’ve got this phenomena… uptight, back in the 70s, I’d go out in the woods… you’d go out and you’d see nobody all day long – and today…. I mean look at you look at here this whole community here – there is a huge influx of tourists. Quite honestly, I mean I live in a tourist area in San Francisco, that is starting to become a worldwide issue: too many tourists. So many tourists that you are degrading the experience of this place. It’s like Venice: all of a sudden they’re not letting the maximum of number of people in any more.
Fahzure: How do people have so much tour time? I mean they’re just always touring.
GF: There are more people making more money than any other time in history. There are more people touring. I mean we have a ton of Chinese tourists, we’ve got tourists from Brazil. It’d blow your mind. I mean, gosh when we were down in Thailand three weeks ago we did a big Trek ride – this was a road ride –
Fahzure: Sorry
GF: – Sorry! You were required to ride a Trek bike, right? 950 riders there, all on Trek bikes, 90% on carbon fibre bikes. People are shocked in the United States because they don’t realise there are people all around the world that not only do they have money, but they have travelled all over the world, they have the internet so that totally savvy to what the hot stuff is. And they’re there in all the hot stuff – it’s all it’s totally changed the world. What’s interesting, you know, I talk about a mountain bike track in every single community, because that’s what we need. Everywhere there is a there is a baseball field, you know we got baseball fields all over the place, why aren’t there mountain bike tracks?
Fahzure: I like to think within two miles of every door because that’s the distance a kid can ride
GF: I agree
Fahzure: That’s the distance a kid can ride on accompanied beyond that as a parent you kinda like “well, I don’t know…” but within two miles, that would be the distance that would make a difference.
GF: I agree. NICA is great,the high school series is great. We want to be in every single high school. But one of the barriers to entry is a lot of kids’ parents can’t afford the overnighter to go do a mountain bike race. So I want to have a course in every neighbourhood, even if it’s just a pump track, it’s still competition, it’s still fun and it still gets kids involved in the whole thing, and they still go for it. So I got a lot of work to do still! And the company does. We are dedicated to making changes in this world, and not just eating a bigger piece of the pie. You know, we want to grow the pie. It’s in our financial best interests, but at the same time it’s like “this feels good”.
Fahzure: Gary, any special messages for our friends in the UK?
GF: Don’t worry Brit-Ex (sic) will work out guys, you’ll always have your bikes!
Fahzure: When you gonna make it over there next?
GF: I’ve got no plan at the moment but I normally make it there at least once, twice a year because I love it there. People can actually speak the language in a quite articulate way and I really enjoy it!
Fahzure: Thanks, man!
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