EL LOCO HOMBRE

Frenchman Rémy Métailler blew up on the MTB scene when a video of him blasting monster gaps in Whistler Bike Park went viral. Since dubbed ‘the king of bike park’, he’s proven he’s no one-trick pony, taking on urban DH races and launching canyons at Red B

“Back in 2016 I was in the Mexican city of Taxco to race the infamous urban downhill there. The course itself is scary enough. You start by gapping off the roof of two buildings down into an alley, which sends you flat-out into loads of steps around corners. A full minute of this is broken up by drops and a big wallride, then you come full-speed into three big jumps at the finish, with the crowd going wild from the sidelines. I was very happy with my riding in the race; there were some big names there and I finished in fifth place, and not far behind first.

“After the event, a jam was organised on the three jumps at the end. I thought, ‘Oh yeah, I can flip the last one!’ The gap wasn’t huge, but the jump itself wasn’t ideal. The run-in was on a corner and the lip was fairly flat, going into a landing that was steep but flattened into the paving stones very quickly. I was confident, though; I’d never failed on a flip before. I was feeling good, but then before dropping in I asked Antoine Bizet – an insane freerider and expert at these things – what the speed and pop was like. He told me, “Go faster than you think and pull up harder than you think.” It sounded wrong to me, but he’s one of the best in the world at this, so I decided to listen to him instead of my gut feeling.

“As soon as I hit the lip, I knew it was wrong. I over-rotated in the air and overshot the landing. Touching down back-wheel first, my rear tyre folded and I went over the bars. I may have pinched a nerve, because my legs and arms didn’t work for a fraction of second, and right away I knew I’d broken a vertebra – I felt it, I heard it. I had feeling in my legs, but it was still terrifying and I didn’t dare move in case I damaged it more.

“After getting lifted out on a spine board and taken to hospital, it turned out I had broken my back, exactly where I’d felt it. It was a long rehab process after that, but I was really lucky that everything healed well. I focused the next year on just becoming as strong as I could and going fast again. A year later, I returned to Taxco and won, which I never thought I could do on a track like that. Every time I ride now, that experience of lying on the ground with a broken back is stuck in my head.”