WILDMAN VINNY
WE CATCH UP WITH VINCENT TUPIN ON HIS HOME TRAILS IN ÉVIAN TO FIND OUT WHAT’S MADE THE FRENCHMAN SO WILD ON A BIKE
Trying to keep up with French freeride ace Vincent Tupin is no easy feat. We give it our best shot on his home trails in Évian and witness first-hand just how wild he is on a bike.
Tmeansrying to follow Vincent Tupin down a trail isn’t easy. He’s an absolute animal on the bike, flicking his back wheel from left to right, pulling stylish whips and scrubs, and hitting corners so hard that it’s a struggle to see the trail ahead because of the earth he’s exploded into your face. He jumps higher than a pouncing leopard and rides quicker than the speed of light. All of this
that, when you first meet Vinny, it’s a surprise to find that he’s an unassuming, polite and incredibly humble guy with only one goal – to have as much fun on his bike as possible. He doesn’t follow any training regimes, there are no stopwatches and there certainly isn’t any pressure to win from sponsors. We’ve arranged to ride some of his home trails with him to find out more about this fearless Frenchman.
Masters of disguise
As he drives us up the hill in his trusty Peugeot 106, Vinny tells us that shuttling his home trails wasn’t always so easy. “When we first started riding, we didn’t all have driving licences,” he explains. “Our friends who had cars would get pissed off that it was always them driving, so we’d offer to help. We’d use back roads to avoid meeting the police or our parents, with massive sunglasses on and bandannas around our faces so people didn’t know who we were. One day, my dad drove past. That evening, he asked if my friend who’d been driving had passed his test. I couldn’t lie. Luckily for me, Dad chose to ignore it. He knew we weren’t getting into too much trouble so turned a blind eye.”
Vinny admits it was a stupid thing to do – definitely don’t try this at home, kids – but he and his friends were just so passionate about bikes that getting to the top of the mountain to ride back down was – and indeed, still is – the most important thing to them.
In at the deep end
We pull down a gravel track, to the start of the trails. The woods are dense and the ground is bathed in dappled light. After a bit of overnight rain, the conditions are as close to perfect as you could hope for – soft, fresh and grippy. Vinny pops his lid on and warms up on a massive ladder drop built by him and his mates. This five-metre jump with a three-metre drop would instill fear in most riders, but Vinny doesn’t even scout it out before hitting it. Sending it over and over again, he’s
relaxed enough to go for suicide no- handers, one-foot tables and seriously stylish whips.
How did he get into riding? “You know, I can’t remember!” he laughs. “There was a big group of us who were into riding dirt jumps at a spot right next to my house. We used to push each other on. It came about naturally, progressing onto bigger things. I’ve always wanted to push my limits. After I was invited to Nico Vink’s LOOSEFEST in its first year, I started to want to hit bigger stuff and found that I loved sending it,” he says, catching his breath after one more run on the jump to get the perfect shot.
Vinny’s local spot is filled with amazing features, from natural, bumpy gully runs to hand-built senders, but you need good bike skills to ride them well. If you don’t send the big doubles then you won’t have enough speed to hit the natural turns and you’ll case the big drop-off, and so on. He’s lucky to be part of a group of like-minded individuals, who are motivated to dig until their palms bleed and ride until exhaustion.
Waiting for the bus
They’re not the only ones on this mountain, though. There are also plenty of young lads from the village down in the valley, who covet the opportunity to ride and hang out with Vinny. And unlike him and his mates, they’ve found a way to get their bikes to the top without breaking the law. “To do shuttle runs on the tracks, they take the bus,” he explains. “They have to wait a while between runs, because the bus only runs every two or three hours, but it doesn’t matter – those lads have
time to kill. They’ll ride the trail, do some edits or some digging, and then wait for the next bus.”
Although they say you should never meet your idols, with Vinny T it couldn’t be further from the truth. “Yeah, they do idolise me, I guess,” he says, talking about the younger riders. “When I see them in the forest, they’ll all stop what they’re doing and watch me come past. They’re really passionate about riding and I love having them in the woods. If they want to ride with me, it’s cool – I think it’s rad to ride with them. They’re young, and love to take risks to try and ride as fast as possible. They love putting themselves in danger to impress me!”
Squash stop
As we hop back on our bikes, Vinny tells me about a high-speed gully run that you can hit without dabbing your brakes – if you dare. He promises me he’s going to “take it easy”, but before I know it, we’ve hit light speed. My bar is brushing the vegetation at the edges of the trail and more roost is flying up past my head than I ever thought possible. It’s one exhilarating ride! As we burst out into bright sunshine, reaching the bottom of Vinny’s seven-minute handmade descent, my heart is racing and the smile on my face says it all.
Vinny tells us that there’s an old lady who lives at the bottom of the trail who loves bike riding and always invites riders into her house to drink homemade squash. We’re in luck – she’s outside on this particularly hot day and ready with the juice. “I know Vincent well, he’s a little local lad,” she says. “I’ve seen him grow up and, whenever he comes past the house, I like to make sure he’s had enough to drink, to give him energy for more riding!” The squash tastes divine.
On the Rampage
He may be a local lad at heart, but Vinny has grand ambitions. After working on Nico Vink’s dig crew at Red Bull Rampage, he was desperate to ride the world’s gnarliest freeride comp himself. “I wanted to go, at least once,” he explains. “It’s the home of freeriding. You can build anything you want. There are rocks and loads of sand and you can get really creative.”
His solution? Catch the eye of the selection committee by getting some ‘Vinny T for Rampage’ T-shirts made up and filming an action-packed edit. It paid off, and he got a last-minute call to step in as a backup rider for the 2017 event. Making his way out to Utah, Vinny carved out a super-steep line down the iconic cliffs. His second run – where he stomped the steepest face on the course, pulled out a backflip and backflip tuck no-hander, and wowed the crowd with his stylish riding – earned him an impressive 78/100 and 14th place.
For someone who’s so wild on the bike, Vinny is amazingly relaxed and easygoing. “I don’t get my motivation from wanting to beat someone else,” he explains, now back in his Peugeot uplift machine. “Knowing that I’ve worked my hardest at something and then seeing the results in videos or in photos, that’s what gets me going. Even when I’m just out riding, I always challenge myself.” We can’t wait to see where that takes Vinny next.
IT’S RAD TO RIDE WITH THE LOCAL LADS. THEY LOVE PUTTING THEMSELVES IN DANGER TO IMPRESS ME!