I just came back from a really nice trip to Chile, where I accompanied German DH champ Johannes Fischbach to the annual city downhill race in Valparaíso and documented his actions for mtb-news.de, which is the biggest MTB-related website in Europe.
A couple of years back, Fischi, Guido Tschugg and I had begun to do series of day-to-day videos from the 4cross world cup stops and other special events, which pretty much exploded onto the social media scene. The concept had been quite cool – not 100% quality in filming etc., but genuinely funny, informative and super current because the clips were posted directly to the web after each day. Those clips were massively popular at the time, but after that season the project kind of went to sleep.
Luckily, Fischi’s new sponsor and mtb-news decided it was still a very good concept and approached us with the idea of doing such a documentary for the urban race. We were obviously hooked and so we booked the flights and made the 30 hour journey to one of the most interesting looking cities in the world, the grafity capital with an outlook over the Pacific ocean – in 2014 we had made that same trip already once, covering the event for Freeride Magazine.
Upon arriving in Valparaíso, we were greeted by amazing 26 degrees and a warm breeze from the sea. Really a dream place to be every once in a while.
Fischi unterwegs zum Valparaiso Urban-DH Rennen von Thomas – Mehr Mountainbike-Videos
On the second day we couldn’t do much as far as riding was concerned, so we just walked around the track area and tried to find some interesting locations. After the 5th or 6th warning from locals about getting robbed we decided to cut it short and switched to checking out the race track.
Fischi stellt die Valparaiso-Strecke vor von Thomas – Mehr Mountainbike-Videos
On sunday, it was finally time to practice on the track and get a feel for the course. The long, narrow and steep stair sets and the very narrow and tight corners through private house and garden corridoors were just some of the technical sections – there were also a couple of handbuilt features, the biggest being a 6m drop from the side of a house. Going through all of these in full speed, without many safety precautions and being in constant danger of hitting one of the many stray dogs pretty much summarizes the charm this urban race has. Some consider it to be the gnarliest race of its kind and that might very well be true.
The atmosphere during pricegiving was absolutely insane… every spectator crowd could learn a thing or two from these crazy Chilean fans!!! At the end of the final video clip you can get a very small taste of what went down, but in real it was a lot more chaotic! 🙂 GRACIAS VALPO!!!!
Hinter den Kulissen: Training & Finale Johannes Fischbach – Red Bull Cerro Abajo Urban DH 2016 von Thomas – Mehr Mountainbike-Videos
Summing up the days, it was a great trip photo- and video-wise and for Fischi it was obviously a perfect event with the first BIG win on his new Radon bike!