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Bienvenido Aguado Alba Drops Everything to Compete at Red Bull Rampage
With only a few days to prepare for Red Bull Rampage, Bienvenido Aguado Alba assembled a motley crew of diggers and made it happen.
Rampage might be a once in a lifetime event, but not everyone gets a lifetime to prepare. Bienvenido Aguado Alba had 25 days and he has spent 14 of them here in Utah. When most riders were able to take a rest, plan their travel, watch videos to plan tricks, book hotels and work out the best dig team over weeks and months, “Bienve” had just a few days.
When Bienve got the call up, he knew he would need a digging team. It turns out that it isn’t easy to pull together two people who are willing to drop everything and go to Utah at a week’s notice. It’s probably even harder when you live in Barcelona. So he started reaching out to friends, sponsors and anyone he thought might be able to help.
The Catalan rider managed to pull together a motley crew of two diggers: his old buddy Ivan Carmona flew with him from Barcelona and they pulled in Henry Wilkins, a very experienced trail builder who lives in Tahoe, California.
Ivan Carmona
© James Stout
Wilkins had never met Bienve before in his life. “We met at the airport,” he laughed, as he prepared to carry the rider’s bike up the mountain on the morning of the event. “I was actually building trails down in Florida when Ray from Sensus [a grip company that works with Bienve and supports trail building] sent me a text. I just kind of ignored it at first but then Bienve sent me one personally and I thought, well this is the world telling me I have to go."
Logistically, it has been a challenge. The team got here early so that they could score a hotel but they were thinking they might end up sleeping in the back of a U-Haul. They also needed quality tools since they broke a rake on the first day. Luckily Wilkins flew with a ski bag full of shovels and rakes and the rest of their tools were purchased in Hurricane at the Home Depot out of the budget Red Bull allocated to each team.
Despite the fact that Carmona speaks no English, or did not when he arrived, and Wilkins speaks no Spanish, they've been communicating just fine. Carmona rolled a cigarette and passed it to Wilkins as we talked at the base of the mountain and they discussed the best route to walk up for the first run in a mixture of words and hand signals. Carmona said he has been learning more English while he’s been here, and encouraged me to teach Wilkins a few words of Catalan.
Bienvenido Aguado Alba Competes at Red Bull Rampage
© James Stout
Wilkins never wanted to come to Rampage unless he could dig; the others have wanted to come for years. This last-minute inclusion got them all here, and they’re loving it. "we managed to build some really good lines, and just seeing it is amazing," Wilkins said. "You watch it on TV but it’s so much bigger when you see it in the flesh.”
Carmona, who remerged with two watering cans and a shovel interrupted our conversation to explain to Wilkins that it was time to climb the mountain. Even after two weeks of work in the freexing cold, the motley crew of diggers were still working hard, watering lips before their riders’ runs. Despite the hard work and long days, Carmona said he would come back again in a heartbeat.
Hopefully, now that the diggers’ work is done, Bienve can secure his team an invitation for next year and they’ll have a bit more time to prepare.
