patoDK

I can't describe the joy of hearing Rob's voice commenting, bring tears to my eyes :)

@phil-mclean: I just went back to see Semenuk's run. His line was 95% (if not more) flatten, packed, and smooth. His whole run was just a slopestyle on a step gradient, IMO. TMac's run was also very much the same. I get your point that things need to be groomed to certain degree to be rideable, but at some level of grooming it stops being big mountain and becomes something else. I actually think that part of the problem is that the sport in general has changed. I think you can see it in Hardline too, the Tasmania track was mostly a motorway, with huge jumps at the end. I stopped watching that half way through. I think this is due to the advent of bike parks. In the late 90s back home in Chile we would just find a back road up a mountain and then just find our way down on the other side, we would move rocks out of the way and patch places where we could not otherwise ride through, etc. Today we have bike parks with smooth lines and big jumps. I think it is a matter of generation taste. And then there is slope style, which does not get me excited at all. I went to Cranworx once in France. I went to check the slope style practice and after 5 minutes I decided to go ride my bike instead, it's just not something for me. As I said, I'm "old". This year's Brendog's line was big mountain, it was a really exciting run, had me on the edge of my seat, I loved it. When his score came up what I understood was that the judges don't see big mountain as I see it, and from the polls here in Pinkbike, I think there are many other who feel the same way. And it was just confirmed on by Darren on the video. I'll take Brendog's chute at the beginning of his run over Semenuk opposite tailwhipping anything anywhere.

More time to think: I wish Rampage would have pushed the limits of the terrain instead of the limits of the jumps/tricks. A great example of this would be Jordie's chute, or last year's The Captain: that's pushing the terrain, the mountain itself, that's pushing freeride to it's limits. When you build a bigger jump to throw a bigger trick you are pushing the limit of the trick and the rider. We have slope style for that. We "had" Rampage for the former.

DNF.

I had more time to think about this. I think my biggest issue is not so much the tricking, but the grooming of the mountain so it can be more trick-able. When you have perfect take offs and landings then it is slopestyle, IMHO, it doesn't matter how big or exposed. Extreme Slopestyle is what it is, not big mountain freeride. But then again I'm old, I got into the sport watching the old Kranked series. From Kranked 1, about 6 minutes in: "Freeride, it kind of explains itself: ride and feel free".

1'20" : "unless your line rides like T-Mac', you better be tricking pretty much everything if you want to win" That's how far I needed to see to confirm my fear: Rampage is gone

Can you say Legend?

they got me at Slayer \m\ (-.-) /m/

Usually I come to check the comments to see which videos are the best, but the only comment here is about checking the comments to see which videos are the best. Better come back later...