- Welcome to Red Bull Hardline.
We're here with trials legend, Danny MacAskill.
You ready to check out the course?
- Most definitely.
Let's do it.
(cheering)
Hot crumpets! (laughs)
So we're kind of, we've just taken up
halfway up the track to the step up.
Which is,
I mean it's in my books, a sizeable feature.
How would you categorize it?
- Aw yeah, pretty big.
- It's very. (laughs)
- It's like a motocross kicker pretty much.
- Now when, I imagine,
you know in your videos,
you're not only fully,
you know, creating this stuff, building it,
but you're also guinea-pigging it.
- Yeah.
- What's your kind of mindset when you're going into that.
Is it a case of you really know what it's going to be like
or sometimes things take you by surprise.
- I mean I think,
it's probably the hardest thing to deal with
is the fear of the unknown
when you're trying something for the first time.
You know like say,
whether it was Gee or Dan
you know, who hit this for the first time.
It's probably a fair bit of adrenaline.
But once you've done it once, even if it goes wrong,
you kind of get that,
you kind of start, you kind of,
well you learn basically.
And then,
you know, your fear might be slightly less
depending on how well it went.
- Cause I remember seeing you in road bike party
with the loop.
- [Danny] Yes.
- I imagine that was, as a feature that was intimidating.
- [Interviewer] Was it difficult?
What was it like?
- [Danny] That was probably one of the sort of
wilder things I've ever done - [Interviewer] Oh really?
- [Danny] Yeah.
But that was different because it wasn't for my own project,
cause it was for Martin.
I had a different mindset.
- Oh did you?
- Yeah, my self preservation was out the window.
(laughter)
I was like ah!
But you know, you turn up to somewhere,
a certain location.
My feeling is that I know I'm going to do that trick that day.
You know, weather permitting, generally.
Or I'll give it my best shot.
But then you kind of got to go through this annoying process
of dealing with the feel of it.
- But do you ever build something and go,
actually you know what, maybe it isn't on.
And walk away?
Or is that still that kind of desire to just do everything.
- No, the things, I would say 98 percent
of the things that we've built have worked within reason.
(laughter)
I think as a rider, you know if,
especially if you have been riding for many years,
you know, you kind of know what's on and what's not.
You know it's like when they're building this.
You kind of have a feeling,
you know what transition, what kind of landing.
And for me it's more about kind of, usually gaps.
When it comes to transition,
I'm a little bit more at my depth.
You know, if I was to hit this for the first time
myself, I would actually rather, you're going to laugh,
do a backflip over it than hit it straight.
Cause I've got no straight line skills.
I mean I don't really have a natural whip in me.
I don't really know which way I hip.
Cause I never ride, we don't have any,
we don't really have many jumps in Scotland.
- Yeah so it's really just tech trials or street or
- Or as when you do a backflip, it's basically like getting
to do a dead sailor, except,
so there's not style involved.
It's a backflip, you're upside down.
And it gets rid of the whole middle part.
Because you're rotating,
you don't have this sort of horrible
stiffening up, overshooting.
It's not until you come around, you can see your landing.
You can either speed up or open out.
And it's got quite a lot of kind of margin for error.
(Western music)
Put's it in perspective here, that is a hell of a shoot.
- Yeah it is indeed.
- And the roots and the rocks are getting very greasy.
(laughter)
Scrub them off of them, I'll be back, dry them off.
- You're not tempted to crack out a downhill bike sometimes?
- I've not ridden one since 2011
- The last time actually was,
it was Dan Atherton's downhill bike back then.
I was going to do a race with Gee.
How are you supposed to race down this stuff?
I mean I can imagine riding it,
but it's a different pail of fish when you're racing it.
- [Interviewer] Yeah I See.
- If I was to ride it myself,
I would just ride the mainline.
I'm not really one for fancy, if I could.
I'm kind of pretty loose, and I'm not,
I've never been a racer so I kind of just...
do what other people do in front of me, or just do what
I'm quite good at saving myself as well.
Like if I get offline,
I'm usually pretty good at like hoping over things.
- [Interviewer] I've got a feeling there's a bit of modesty
coming into play in there (laughs)
- [Danny] No, definitely not.
I'm not the rider to follow, that's for sure.
You get these guys who are like
laser precision kind of style,
and I'm
I'm on flat peddles for a reason,
because I'm paddleing my way down
I control that.
There's not many trails that I've actually,
learnt how to ride.
You know, where you have all the lines dialed.
You know that's memory that I just don't have.
My brain kind of works again, more on edge,
everything's like edges.
It's like you kind of blank out
most things, and you just sort of look at where the edges
that you're going to get traction or not.
On the trial's bike it's mainly edges, so.
I pretend to know how to ride my own bikes properly
in videos occastionally, and that's about it.
Luckilly I don't have to race.
- [Interviewer] Right, if you're pretending
to ride mountain bikes,
you know I do. - Yeah that's it.
It's an easy job.
This is where I'm going to slip on my arse.
- Looking at something like this, I mean
I would imagine the night sleep you're going to get
before riding something like this.
Pretty gnarly, how do you sleep before doing
one of your big projects?
I suppose it's over a couple weeks,
but if you've got something in the books the next day that's
- Depends how much somethings been on your mind.
Sometimes you're like, have had some
funny dreams the night before.
Well sometime I've dreamt that I've actually done the trick.
And then you wake up in the morning
with such disappointment.
And knowing that you know,
you look out the window and it's
kind of slightly damp
a bit windy.
And you've still got to go out there and do it.
Kind of like how it is today, to be honest.
- [Interviewer] If you could give any advice,
obviously all these guys are pros,
they know what they're doing.
If you could give any advice to any of them
that were feeling a bit shaky,
what do you think it would be?
- [Danny] What, to the riders doing this?
- [Interviewer] Yeah, so say if there was someone
that came up to you and said,
Danny I'm a fool, I'm way out my depth.
- Well I dunno, it depends how much
(laughter)
Yeah, you're probably in the wrong place,
I mean I suppose, maybe not with this course,
and mean this is testing the real like best in the world.
The very best.
This is like, a wild course, but.
- I was talking to one of the riders yesterday,
who shall remain unnamed, and he said
he thought he had a run that he wasn't going to qualify,
and he initially felt relief,
cause he knew the rain was coming.
And then he said he found out he qualified,
and then he was anxious.
Oh my god, I've got to ride.
Is it going to rain tomorrow?
Are you kidding?
- Well that's something,
you get the feeling when I see
the guys coming over the bottom of the finish line there.
It's a lot like doing a run on Rampage.
They've got to get through a lot to get to the bottom.
And it's the same with any World Cup.
But still, this has got, I mean stuff like this is,
pretty horrendous, and especially on a greasy
day like today.
I don't fancy it much.
I think it's funny when you're walking down stuff
and you think it's impossible on your feet.
You know, it's quite often when you're walking up
the walk gets faster,
whenever you're going riding and you,
especially if you haven't ridden it before.
You say, wow that looks almost impossible.
Well once you come up the feature again on the bike,
You suddenly pass things that you thought
were going to be trouble, like it's nothing.
That is,
I think it's quite the feature up there.
- I think it's credit to, now that into building it.
They're actually like, aw yeah they'll be way down there.
All right, just give me a afternoon and a shovel.
- Yeah exaclty.
- It will be a mountain (laughs)
Pretty incredible.
(hip-hop music)
Then something like this,
which is a demanding feature enough,
even if it had a grassy rugby field of a runout.
But on the exit, you do have high consequence.
You know?
Does that, do you factor in that?
Are you kind of rolling a risk assessment?
Or are you just thinking don't even worry about that.
- Yeah for sure - Assume you'll get it right.
- I think it's definitely when you come downhill,
you definitely have,
these guys will have a much more
sort of tunnel vision approach.
They know they're line.
They'll assess the risks here,
but they're not worrying about that.
You just concentrate on getting your lines rights, you know.
Don't have to worry about this if you're going into it.
(laughter)
I definitely, I mean I, yeah I've,
I take a lot of that stuff into consideration for sure.
It's cool seeing forwards,
like seeing the relatability of some of the size
of the features in this course.
It's cool seeing like,
people standing on the road gap.
It really gives you,
- Yes.
- You know, sometimes it can be hard to kind of get
for the general public to get a scale of,
say a course like this.
I'm lucky with videos.
I can kind of ride the streets or,
ride in things that kind of,
you know if someone's never seen any kind of biking at all,
they can understand that car is a car,
foam box are foam box.
- [Interviewer] (laughs) Yeah, it's true, yeah absolutely.
- [Danny] It's everyday stuff.
- [Interviewer] That's really true.
- [Danny] I've kind of learned to kind of
use that to my advantage with the videos.
Or pretend to put kids in danger
(laughter)
In the back of trailer.
(mumbles) sort of artsy these days.
- Pretend, was it?
- Well, you know she was in it for
- Trick of the camera?
- She was only in the trailer when I was doing the backflip.
(laughter)
(rock music)
- So you know,
we have got a stellar World Cup downhill season.
We've got events like this.
Gee Atherton's back at Rampage.
It's kind of cool to see these downhill riders,
obviously who are just, you know fastest guys on the planet,
but also showcasing the variety of their skills.
Do you think it goes the other way?
Would you be tempted to you know,
see if you can mix in with these boys?
- Oh no, no way.
(laughter)
They're something else.
No you don't stand much to gain, that's not what you said.
(laughter)
- You know,
better to let people think I would be fast out here,
I actually can't do it, but.
No I think it's a really cool
time in mountain biking.
- Yeah it's more
- Yeah I think it's kind of going, I would say in cycles.
I mean in Gee, one of the first to do Rampage,
back in like 2010 or something.
- 10 years ago or so, yeah.
- And then there was obviously Brendan Fairclough,
who's been doing like his Deathgrip films,
and everything in between Rampage.
Everything like that.
But I think it's, with this kind of modern age
of like internet and Instagram,
you got all these kind of younger riders coming through.
And the course kind of showcases that stuff as cool.
- Yeah it does, yeah.
- Where you kind of got chaos
- Chaotic and chaos just absolutely ripping that apart.
Cause they actually look some of
the most comfortable on course.
- Yeah, it's cool.
I think it's just like,
it's cool like people are just having fun.
It's not just about the, being on the podiums.
It's like, it's nice to see that kind of side
of the mountain biking as well.
(jazz music)
(cheering and clapping)
- Aw, look at that!
(laughter)
I love his like movement on his bike.
He's so sick.
Do you think you kind of see yourself, you know,
just to imagine something,
like imagine it or way back home.
These actual real big, crazy endeavors.
Do you see yourself kind of maybe,
a director role, where you get a nice chair ana a clipboard?
- To be honest, I'd like to kind of do, I mean,
I'm good friends with Andreu,
he's been doing
- Oh of course well he's not (laughs)
- Yeah, but he's doing, you know
he's been a professional rider, friend of some brands
for over 30 years.
That's pretty amazing.
And he's kind of,
I mean he's basically, not had a similar,
now I'm following in his footsteps.
But I mean, he's kind of known how to do stuff
that's not just for the course.
Hitting the mainstream.
And it's a lot about storytelling.
There's a lot of stories out there, whether it's,
it doesn't always have to be the craziest, biggest stuff.
It can just be something that people can relate to.
So, hopefully I can be doing this as a professional rider
for a good few years yet.
- I think you've got a few years left. (laughs)
- But I mean, equally, I love
looking at different sports.
Not just mountain biking.
Especially sports that are very competition focused
where the racers are the climbers, or the,
whatever they are, the athletes are always focused
about being on a podium.
And then when they're always focused on the podium,
they maybe don't,
sort of see the potential outside of that.
You know what the films say or the,
anywhere there's film.
Fullsize films, or Instagram, or wherever.
(rock music)
(whistling and cheering)
(cowbells rattling)
- So looking at something like this,
it's almost hard to ever really get an accurate,
like feel of it, on the TV camera.
I mean, it's absolutely massive.
How would you describe it?
- I mean it looks almost impossible.
(laughter)
Imagine, see if I was doing it.
I mean look at the size of the gap.
You can imagine the landing bascially almost being
at the start of fire, but,
but obviously we got to have speed to get that far.
Yeah it's pretty crazy, I mean it's hard to get a scale.
You maybe see it, I don't know, I mean,
what is it like 25 or 30 feet up?
- [Interviewer] Yeah.
(speech drowned out by cowbells)
Would you ever be tempted to push something that far?
- [Danny] Yeah, I would think I'd be,
I could imagine training that to somebody.
- [Interviewer] Yeah?
- [Danny] I think so.
(crowd cheering)
- You sure? (laughs)
- Yeah, I think so.
- They make it look so easy, eh?
- Yeah that was a little bit of a case as well but,
yeah I think so, as long as,
I mean if it was someone like Gee,
then you know, like he's done this a lot.
Loads of the times then.
- You know you can trust him.
- Yeah.
- Nice.
- [Danny] Maybe one day.
(crowd cheering)
- So, that's been a pretty interesting insight
to the mental aspects,
and also kind of creativity behind, well what is is you do.
So thank you very much for coming on.
- No worries.
- It's been an absolute pleasure, put her there.
Now guys, if you liked that, I would thoroughly recommend
checking out when you kind of bought a ticket
for an absolute death mission on Martin's tandem.
- Oh, I know.
- How was that?
- Terrifying.
- More scary than a hardline, possibly?
- We talked about maybe taking it on next year.
(laughter)
- I think this is rollable, you'll be all right.
- Yeah, (mumbles).
- Awesome, thanks for watching guys.
Don't forget to like and subscribe,
and we'll see you next time.
Cheers.