The Red Bull Rampage is as much a part of mountain biking as almost any other event. It fascinates, it polarizes, and it drives the sport forward. And yes, I, too, will once again—reluctantly, but driven by a thirst for thrills—sit in front of the screen and marvel as the world’s best freeriders hurtle down the rock faces of Utah.

Calling for an end to the Rampage would therefore be too easy. But it would be just as easy to dismiss every serious accident as an unavoidable part of freeriding.

Eleven years ago, I wrote here about the “Circus Maximus” of modern extreme sports. The occasion was Paul Basagoitia. A small mistake at the 2015 Rampage was all it took. He fractured a thoracic vertebra, injured his spinal cord, and was initially paralyzed from the waist down. Later, he learned to walk and ride a bike again.

Ten years later, the next brutal reminder followed. At the 2025 Rampage, Adolf Silva attempted a double backflip over a massive drop, didn’t rotate enough, and crashed hard. Several vertebrae were broken or displaced, along with a fractured sternum and six broken ribs. Silva lost sensation below his chest and is now in a wheelchair.

Luck should not be part of a safety strategy

In between, there were plenty of warning signs. Graham Agassiz shattered his pelvis in 2016 during a botched 360. In 2023, Gee Atherton was flown by helicopter to the hospital after attempting a gigantic drop. The result was broken vertebrae and skull fractures. The fact that such crashes don’t end even more frequently in paraplegia or worse isn’t just a matter of skill. Sometimes it’s simply luck. And that’s exactly where the problem begins.

The Rampage shouldn’t disappear. But it needs to ask itself what kind of progression it rewards. Today, line choice and difficulty, tricks and style, fluidity and control, as well as the size of the jumps, all factor into the scoring. So if you want to win, you don’t just need the most technically demanding line. Spectacular airtime is part of the game. Perhaps this is precisely where the most important lever lies.

Why does the next drop have to be even higher and the next jump even farther? Why not reward technical difficulty more heavily? A hair-raisingly steep, natural line, where every centimeter demands precision, can be more challenging to ride than yet another bigger jump. Difficulty doesn’t automatically mean height. And difficulty doesn’t have to mean there’s no landing area.

The Rampage could also be more consistent when it comes to safety. A back protector does not prevent paraplegia and does not make a fall from twenty meters harmless. Nevertheless, given the potential consequences, it seems strange that riders at one of the world’s most dangerous mountain bike events sometimes forgo comprehensive upper-body protection. A mandatory minimum standard would at least be a sign that safety isn’t completely subordinated to the spectacle.

The Rampage should remain

Freeriding thrives on risk. Anyone who eliminates it completely also eliminates part of what makes this sport what it is. No one is asking for safety nets at every drop or foam mats in the Utah desert. If you want to eliminate risk entirely, the Rampage shouldn’t take place anymore—not even Downhill World Cups. And that would be just as unthinkable.

But progression doesn’t necessarily have to mean: higher, farther, faster. The Rampage has shaped the sport of mountain biking for over two decades. Perhaps its next great achievement won’t be to produce an even bigger jump. Rather, it might be in showing that freeriding can continue to evolve without anyone eventually paying the ultimate price for our entertainment.

Because that possibility exists. And by then, at the very latest, the question “When is enough enough?” would be asked too late.