Brendan Fairclough’s 50ft canyon backflip – not bad for a guy who’s afraid of heights!
Brendan Fairclough takes us behind the scenes at Red Bull Rampage as he battles the terrain, the desert dust, the pressure of live TV – and the fear of that 50ft canyon backflip
This isn’t just because of the crazy tricks that get thrown down either, but because every couple of years the venue changes. Every feature, every inch of every line has to be handcrafted by the rider and their build team, which consists of two other people, with no power tools allowed. Resources are limited, so you either have to trade sandbags, labour and time with other teams, or simply dig a line top-to-bottom without sharing any features. The latter isn’t necessarily the smartest idea but it’s the one we undertook last year. Subsequently, we were in the comfortable position this time of having a line ready and waiting in the desert.
This isn’t something the Rampage rookies have the luxury of – they need to pick their route down the mountain while others are simply polishing their line from the previous year. It brings a big advantage for the returning riders like me. Second years are good years. Rampage rookies for 2019 included Bienvenido [Aguado Alba], Emil [Johansson] and Johnny [Salido]. Not only did they have a disadvantage when it came to the workload, they also had very limited space to work with. Riders with established lines won’t be quick to share!
I really couldn’t believe how well our line had lasted the year. Nearly everything was how we left it. You could even see my tyre marks on the landing rocks. It’s weird to think that all these crazy features have been sitting there in the desert for the whole time. I don’t imagine the locals are especially tempted to ride them. I certainly wouldn’t be!
Experience pays
This year was my seventh Rampage. Seven years is enough time to pick up a pretty solid understanding of how to dig in the Virgin desert. Over the years we’ve taken on all kinds of challenges at the Rampage site. From days spent picking away at giant iceberg-style rocks to being roped onto vertical cliff faces with pickaxes, we’ve built features in some pretty unique settings, compared to the loam of the Surrey Hills where we come from. The first thing that we definitely have sorted out is tool choice. In my first year I remember really panicking when it came to knowing what to buy. We have it down to a fine art now.
I definitely feel like having a solid team is superimportant. I know that Olly [Wilkins], Ben [Deakin] and I are all hard workers and aren’t going to be slacking off at all. Both have also got a lot of Rampage digging experience and don’t need to be taught all the techniques required to work the dirt. In past years we used to split up and work on different parts of the hill but since then I’ve realised the importance of moral support. You get so much more done when you’re messing around together. It lightens the load having friends around to talk nonsense with and definitely makes it feel a lot more fun. More fun than my finals run, that’s for sure!
Flipping out
With time being so precious, we came to the site with a plan for our dig days. I’d been sitting thinking about what I wanted to do to my line for an entire year, and had it pretty clearly defined in my head. Olly, Deaks and I had even met up and talked it through before we left. We had a list and we had a deadline! The first and biggest point on my checklist was the canyon. Canyons have been part of my Rampage runs since my first campaign. This year, I wanted to do something that’d really be remembered. We’d joked last year about me flipping the canyon and somehow it’d stuck in my head. I really wanted to flip that thing, regardless of how much work it’d be to make it happen. In order to make the take-off big enough to allow a rotation, we needed to not only add dirt, but also take some away, which took hours. The same went for the landing. We ended up taking out a double-garage-worth of mountain! In the end, all I was left with was 15ft of run-out and a 4ft-high landing. It was, however, enough to get the job done.
I went through stages of thinking it was possible. As each different rider walked up past our canyon, they’d try to guess what we were up to. I got some really good pointers from Andreu [Lacondeguy] on what he thought it’d feel like to flip. It was terrifying having this looming ahead of me. I tried my best to not talk – or even think – about it too much. Writing cheques is all well and good, but cashing them can be daunting, especially on live TV.
The next big build on our list was the top section of my run. After last year, I wanted to work on improving the run before I got to ‘Dwayne’ (the rock). We felt that perhaps my run lacked ‘Rampage-style’ drops. I hate hitting blind stuff and don’t really want to put it in my own line. I’m also scared of heights, believe it or not. Drops can definitely be classified as ‘heights’ at Rampage! The one we found was medium-sized by Utah standards but massive compared to anything I’d previously hit. It’d involve rebuilding the ‘mini’ canyon gap before it, cutting a big part of hill out between, and building a big berm and a hip jump before we finally reached Dwayne. Obviously linking all these features involves cutting-in giant benches to make it possible. The gnarlier the feature, the wider you want the bench. We also wanted to make everything in the line that little bit bigger.
RAMPAGE REALLY IS VERY DIFFERENT EVERY YEAR.
THE DESERT HADN'T SEEN ANY RAIN FOR 100 DAYS. RIDERS WERE DIGGING IN DUST MASKS OR SCARVES, JUST TO AVOID 7 YOU CAN IMAGINE!
HONESTLY, THE WHOLE WAY DOWN MY RUN I COULDN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT THE CANYON FLIP. WEIRDLY, I WAS ACTUALLY HOPING I'D CRASH SO I WOULDN'T HAVE TO DO IT!
Groundhog day
The Rampage dig days start to merge into one after the first few late nights. It becomes a rhythm, you really are grinding. You wake up in the dark, go to the site, dig all day, go home in the dark and sleep. This is repeated for nine days with a mandatory rest day in the middle. Bikes aren’t allowed on site until after the halfway point and I’m always itching to get going by then. The dust was mega-tough this year, because the desert hadn’t seen any rain for 100 days before we arrived. Subsequently, riders were digging in dust masks or scarves. We had to consider wind direction before doing anything, just to avoid the worst dust bogeys you can imagine! Your hands take a lot of punishment digging in those conditions. After a long stint, Olly had some gnarly blisters. The boys tried to keep me off the tools towards finals day. They even had a fine system for every time I touched a tool – £10 whenever a pick or shovel was seen in my hands. I must remember to pay that…
The grand finale
As soon as my bike comes out, time seems to move very quickly. Testing and finals almost seem to merge into one. For most features, I have a pretty good idea of speed, but bigger stuff is much harder to judge. I try to go through everything methodically – a couple of speed checks, conversations with the team and (usually) on the third run-in I’ll pull the trigger. Testing is tense and when I tick off a feature it’s a huge rush for all of us. Some of the best moments at Rampage are during testing, when we celebrate after it’s gone well. Wind often plays its part and we get the testing done either early on or pretty late. This year, I got everything done apart from the canyon prior to the day before finals.
The canyon definitely worried me. Although it was the same gap as last year, it was a very different jump. I found it unpredictable. We’d built the take-off with a flip in mind, so jumping it straight felt hard to judge. I cased on my first attempt and narrowly avoided a big crash. Even on the morning of finals I overshot it. It’s pretty tough to stay motivated in these situations. For me, jumps this big, with such gnarly consequences, aren’t the most ‘fun’ to hit. They’re maybe more like ‘type 2 fun’ – after landing it you can enjoy it a little more!
Finals are the first time I ever link all of the features together, but the canyon was the only thing in my thoughts. In a way, it made me focus on one point rather than all the other gnarly stuff I had to tackle first. Honestly, the whole way down my run I couldn’t stop thinking about the canyon flip. Weirdly, I was actually hoping I’d crash so I wouldn’t have to do it! When I landed the Dwayne Johnson rock, it became unavoidable. Even with the helicopter thundering in the sky and the announcer bellowing over the PA, everything went silent for me. I lined up, brakechecked and pulled. This was by far the techiest backflip I’ve ever attempted. The jump was 50ft long and not like any of the trick jumps I’d flipped previously. Honestly, it went so perfectly that I couldn’t believe it. Travelling upside down at that speed was a mad feeling. I landed the flip better than I had on my previous runs, which had all been jumped straight. The rest of my run was a blur – the tuck no-hand flip I’d premiered the day before felt easy, and nothing compares to crossing that finish line!
I don’t know whether it was the fact that it was late in the season, the workload required to set it up or simply the sheer weight of the situation, but I had such an intense feeling of relief after my run this year. There are some obvious reasons for this, but the culmination of everything left me with something more. This could be my last Rampage, an event I grew up dreaming of visiting. Maybe it was that. Or perhaps I was just happy to have survived that canyon! Either way, this event has been an experience that I’ll always keep with me.
I HAD SUCH AN INTENSE FEELING OF RELIEF AFTER MY RUN. THIS COULD BE MY LAST RAMPAGE, AN EVENT I GREW UP DREAMING OF VISITING