Brett Rheeder took prime honors at Pink Bull Rampage 2022, as heavy wind shut down seven riders hoping to make a podium bid of their second run.
When Brandon Semenuk completed his run at Rampage, the group awaited a drawn-out scoring determination.
Little did they know, they’d already seen the 12 months’s final snippet of Rampage motion. What had been a relaxed day full of dense driving quickly turned windy, and riders seeking to make a second run stalled above on the beginning platform.
Because the wind socks stood straighter, Jumbotron footage confirmed it was solely worse on the prime. Jaxson Riddle’s bleach-blond hair blew wildly, and riders’ jerseys rippled whereas they did push-ups to cross the time.
Quickly, race officers known as the occasion — and a win for Brett Rheeder.
Rheeder’s run, technically tight and constant, earned him an enormous win in what’s been a profitable 12 months. A minor knee harm final September saved him out of Rampage in 2021. However he got here off the sidelines scorching this 12 months, successful September’s Pure Choice Proving Grounds.
Pink Bull Rampage Winner
After the win, Rheeder mentioned a private method that emphasizes taking the perfection of strain off himself keyed the win. That and shut, devoted teamwork together with his diggers — Phil McLean and Austin Davignon, who gained the 2022 Digger Award.
“We labored actually onerous. We spent all of our power constructing this line and we have been nonetheless attempting to repair and make the final leap rideable this morning. We ended up with a very authentic line, and constructing all of it on our personal as a result of we couldn’t discover anybody to crew up with.
“I didn’t maintain the strain of needing to win the competition. I’m beginning to mess around with taking that weight off my shoulders and the final two contests that I’ve achieved, it’s seeming to work — and it’s far more fulfilling, too!”
Rheeder’s 90.6 edged out Symon Godziek, in second place with an 86.33, and Semenuk, whose trick-heavy run landed him with an 84.
Godziek fired up the group essentially the most of any rider all day with a 360 drop-in to a backflip over the infamous canyon leap — a 75-foot hole. Throwing the methods again to again meant defeating an almost inconceivable problem of protecting sufficient velocity to make each the leap and the backflip.
The lengthy deliberation over Semenuk’s run drew widespread boos on the end corral. No different rider dared attempt his drop-in, straight down the primary chute off a caveman (which gained Finest Trick).
Elsewhere, native Jaxson Riddle (who gained the Type Award) lit up the group together with his motocross-style methods. He landed extra methods than another rider within the higher bowl with a saran wrap, a heel clicker, and a stalefish. And Cam Zink, contemporary off a nasty crash in Thursday’s observe, took a extra subdued line, gained the Toughness Award, and completed tenth.
“I’m fairly certain I broke my foot [in the crash],” Zink advised me on the stroll down from the rostrum.
Reed Boggs and Thomas Genon punched their tickets to Rampage 2023, in fourth and fifth.
