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Red Bull Hardline: the best winning runs in the downhill event's history
Rewatch the winning runs from the world’s toughest downhill moutain bike race ahead of the return of the Red Bull Hardline.
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Red Bull Hardline brings the world’s fastest racers and bravest freeriders together, as they pit themselves not only against each other but also the toughest downhill race track in the world.
Running since 2014, the event sees its competitors converge on a steep Welsh hillside for a somewhat terrifying week getting to grips with the track, ahead of the downhill race on the Sunday. Every year the track evolves, conditions change, and lines need to be learnt and relearnt before the weekend race.
The course comprises massive drops, savage tech, freestyle ramps, enormous doubles, two-storey-high road gaps and more rocks, roots and holes than you can shake a stick at. Every Hardline has a winner, but occasionally it’s the track that really comes out on top.
To conquer Hardline – that is, to make it down the hill in one piece (the goal of most of its racers) – takes the utmost skill, athleticism, courage and precision. It also asks a lot of the bikes, requiring exceptional components and set-up to cope with the barrage of big hits, off-cambers, turns, and changing gradients.
In other words, whoever wins the Hardline is a special rider indeed. International stars of the mountain biking scene such as Loïc Bruni, Mick Hannah and Brage Vestavik have had their mettle tested on the truly daunting Dan Atherton-designed course. To-date it’s the race’s UK contingent – Danny Hart, Ruaridh Cunningham, Bernard Kerr, Craig Evans and Gee Atherton – and Canada's Jackson Goldstone who have managed to hold everything together on the hill and come away victorious.
Rewatch the best action from Hardline’s history below.
01
2014 | Danny Hart makes history at the first-ever Hardline
7 min
Red Bull Hardline
Red Bull Hardline
The first ever Hardline was an eyeopener for its riders. With a wild Welsh mountain to tame, a select group worked their way down the course, ticking off one monstrous feature at a time. While this pilot race was smaller in terms of participants and spectators than subsequent events, it still had its fair share of superstars. Danny Hart pieced together a near-perfect run to become the inaugural Hardline champion.
02
2015 | Ruaridh Cunningham uses technical wizardry to tame the course
4 min
Ruaridh Cunningham's winning run
Red Bull Hardline 2015
If there’s one thing Hardline is good at, it’s scaring riders and breaking bikes. The 2015 event was tough on its riders, with several dropping out through injury and Gee Atherton sidelined with a flat tyre. But it was unsurprising to see a technical master come out on top. Ruaridh Cunningham rode meticulously where others fell and took the race win.
03
2016 | Bernard Kerr's versatility shows he might be something of a Hardline expert
4 min
Red Bull Hardline 2016: Bernard Kerr's winning run
Watch Bernard Kerr storm to the finish run as takes the lead at Red Bull Hardline 2016.
Cunningham proved that his 2015 win was no fluke by once again linking Hardline’s features into a fast race run, but this time he’d have to settle for second step on the podium. In first, a certain Mr Bernard Kerr took his first Hardline victory on what he later stated as his favourite downhill track – anywhere.
A rider who’s as comfortable in freeride and dirt jump territory as he is in downhill racing, the dynamic nature of the course seemed to play to Kerr's strengths. Right from the off, he was smashing the splits set by Cunningham and finished the course a blistering 2.4 seconds up.
04
2017 | Craig Evans pulls it out of the bag in the worst conditions
3 min
Red Bull Hardline 2017: Craig Evans' winning run
Hailed as one of the toughest downhill mountain bike races in the world, the fourth edition of Red Bull Hardline returns to the hills of Mid Wales.
When you are faced with the world’s toughest downhill track, the last thing you want is rain. But this was the year of mud. Up to this point the classic Welsh weather had surprisingly never been too severe, but in 2017 the rain came, and it didn’t relent. Not that it put anyone off. Racing saw some high-profile spills (namely Adam Brayton, who ploughed shoulder-first into a tree), but another technical genius, Craig Evans, pulled it out of the bag to take the most high-profile win of his career.
05
2018 | Gee Atherton finally wins on home turf
4 min
Red Bull Hardline 2018: Gee Atherton's Winning run
Gee Atherton's winning run from the Red Bull Hardline 2018 finals, September 15th 2018.
With the endless hours of graft the Atherton family has put into the course, and the event as a whole, 2018 was finally the pay-off year. While Dan had stood on the podium at the first event in 2014, Gee had suffered mechanicals at several events. This time round, Gee wasn’t letting anything get in the way of the win. He laid down one of the most impressive ever Hardline runs, taking first place by over five seconds.
06
2019 | Bernard Kerr becomes the first double Hardline winner
4 min
Bernard Kerr's winning run, Red Bull Hardline 2019
Bernard Kerr becomes the first ever two-time winner of Red Bull Hardline with this epic race run.
Hardline gets bigger and badder each year, and it just keeps on attracting more and more of the best mountain bikers globally. This time the likes of Matt Jones showed up – although even he deemed the course too gnarly to race – and perfect practice conditions meant riders could even session the enormous jumps and technical features, with many backflips, whips and spins pulled.
But Hardline is about racing and, well, being difficult, and so it was that the clouds descended for race day, making the course greasy and even more treacherous. It would take a heroic run to win, and no one was better suited to the task than Bernard Kerr, who became Hardline’s only two-time winner.
07
2021 | Bernard Kerr cements his status as king of Hardline
4 min
Bernard Kerr's winning run
Check out British rider Bernard Kerr's winning downhill run that sealed his third Red Bull Hardline victory.
Its regular late September date means Red Bull Hardline is traditionally a wet and wild affair, but the reshuffled 2021 UCI World Cup schedule saw it moved to July to avoid any clashes. Could this be the year that the weather wouldn't play a role in proceedings? Not quite. Despite a heatwave turning the course into a dust bowl, strong winds meant qualifying was cancelled, making finals day the only time riders could put together an all-out race run.
With Gee Atherton out injured, Bernard Kerr entered the week as the strong favourite. But it wasn't a foregone conclusion. Kade Edwards and Laurie Greenland had come on strong since the 2019 edition, while there was a group of debutants who had come to race – and not simply make up the numbers.
The racing was full-throttle from the off. Matteo Iniguez set a blistering pace that only five could beat – all of whom were experienced Hardliners. Kade Edwards backed up his first top 10 UCI World Cup finish with a silky smooth run that showed why he is considered one of the best bike handlers in the world. Laurie Greenland used all of his experience to shave a second off of Edwards' time and put himself in the hot seat. Joe Smith looked to be on a storming run until a fall after the new Step Down brought his race to an abrupt end.
And then there was Bernard Kerr. The final rider to come down the hill, he would have to put in a course-record time to make it a hattrick of wins. From the first split, it never looked in doubt though. In the green the whole way down the course, the Surrey-based rider proved yet again that the course's mixture of huge features and technical riding suited him down to a tee, putting more than a second into Greenland's time.
08
2022 | Jackson Goldstone defies expectations on his debut
4 min
Jackson Goldstone's winning run
Jackson Goldstone conquers the toughest course in downhill mountain biking to take the win at Red Bull Hardline 2022.
Historically, Hardline had only been won by Brits. The thinking? Riders will have cut their teeth on soil and loam similar to those found in Wales, and the course is a different proposition from what most international riders on the World Cup circuit are used to. Canadian Jackson Goldstone clearly didn't get the memo, though.
The 18-year-old from Squamish, British Columbia, was attending his first Red Bull Hardline after claiming the 2022 Junior World Cup overall series. Quick to get to grips with the course, he was soon keeping pace with some of the most experienced riders, and put down a near-faultless run come finals day to put himself in the hot seat with two riders to go.
Both Adam Brayton and three-time winner Bernard Kerr couldn't keep off the deck, handing the debutant a win at the first time of asking. Goldstone not only became the first non-Brit to win the event, but also the youngest winner in its history.
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