Dopo la sua disastrosa caduta alla Rampage 2023 era calato il silenzio su Gee Atherton. Oggi il britannico torna con un video girato in Svizzera ad Engelberg-Titlis.
Gee said “From the start, the Ridgeline Series has been about taking mountain-biking to the limit… exploring what’s possible on a bike and creating the most stunning footage in the most amazing places around the world. I love that feeling of being on the very limit of how far we can go …
I’m super proud of what we achieved in the Series so far, but I wanted to move beyond the adrenaline and glamour of a four minute edit. I wanted to show the reality behind those action highlights, the hard grind, the setbacks, and the absolute trust in my bike, my crew, and my equipment that are essential in the making of these films. I want to keep on pushing boundaries and this film gives an unvarnished insight into what that takes. Every single step felt like we’d picked a fight with forces way bigger than ourselves.
People ask me how I forget or block out the injuries I’ve sustained on previous Ridgelines, but you never forget, I’m never without those injuries, in my mind and in my body … for me it’s about how you operate with them and learn to be ok and accept and carry them – this is who you are now. These extreme locations make all of us dig deep into a zone you can rarely access elsewhere.”
Every Ridgeline film has presented a new challenge, pushed the team that bit further, but moving out of Wales into Alpine terrains super-sized the challenges – instead of hiking up to Terren y Gesail 666m above Dyfi Bike Park Gee and the crew faced 3,600m ascents with crumbling rockfaces and 600m sheer drops… every step they took the mountain resisted their efforts.
Ridgeline V was co-directed by Gee and his long-time friend and collaborator Dan Griffiths (Moonhead Media) a veteran of the entire Ridgeline series. Rather than honing in on only spectacular riding shots they set about showing the whole process, 8 days of physical and mental overdrive. Gee said “We’ve grown accustomed to fast-paced riding edits, with awesome skills in stunning settings but it’s always harder than it seems, every time we do these edits something unpredictable happens, I wanted to go beyond the wow-factor of those edited highlights to show the true cost of those 120 seconds or so”
The film is the second in the series to feature the A170, Gee said “Without 100% trust in the bike these films would not exist. I needed something with raw power, precision, and reliability to tackle these extreme terrains. The A.170 checked all the boxes”. It’s also the most int1se and personal film to date revealing a side to Gee we’ve never seen before. Advised by Camera Operator and Lead Mountaineer, Brodie Hood, a hugely experienced action and adventure specialist, the team abandon the final 50m ascent to the summit and head back down the mountain.
Gee said “It was so hard, absolutely gutting. We’d had two quite unproductive days because of the weather, but we’d found this spectacular peak and had scouted right up to 100m from the summit before it got dark. Next day we’d headed back up there, bike on our backs, gruelling hours of anaerobic climbs across this vast 45 degree slab, we were at all at our absolute limit. And then we saw it, this really tricky ridge, no anchors, overhangs, crumbly rock…
I’ll admit I was in full turbo mode my default mode is always “Let’s get it done” …. I kept walking back up to the difficult part and looking down the 600mm cliff edge, the rocks crumbling away in my hands, it was terrifying – such a slap in the face. I was so, so close to just picking up the bike and going for it, but even at time I kind of knew…
Brodie said “Look, you might get up there but there’s a 50/50 chance you’re going to kill one of your crew, I want to take these guys home to their families ” He’s a pretty adventurous dude, he’s constantly charging ahead, fearless, never gets tired – so when he says “ don’t go” it’s sobering.”
As hard as it was to walk away from what could have been some of the best footage we’d ever captured, we had to face reality and next day we went again with a different approach to the same ridge, the front face was (just about) manageable so we got our shot after all.
Big thanks to the crew – Brodie Hood, Dan Griffiths/Moonhead Media, Jamie Robertson, Nico Turner and to the town of Engelberg, Titlis Cableways, Deuter, Red Bull and Prologo for their support.
Discuterne con sincero interesse mi piace, ma così mi pare solo un modo di sminuire e giudicare senza considerazione per tutta una vita che ci sta dietro. La famiglia potrebbe supportarlo o anche no, ma secondo me non è affare mio.
Capita nella vita di fare scelte difficili per la propria famiglia anche senza essere sportivi estremi, e le motivazioni e le ricadute secondo me non dovrebbero essere oggetto di pubblico giudizio.
Secondo me se il prodotto finito (per le più svariate motivazioni) non interessa si dovrebbe semplicemente ignorare e tirare dritto, se invece interessa ma non piace si può argomentare, ma con un po' più di apertura e in modo più articolato rispetto alle sentenze da una riga che appaiono regolarmente.
OT: Ad esempio se interessa l'aspetto del "Eh si ma la famiglia?" il film "Free Solo", quello su Alex Honold e la sua impresa su El Capitan, è molto interessante, il tema è trattato e non in modo superficiale. Parallelamente anche "The Dawn Wall", sempre incentrato sulla stessa parete ma con un altro atleta eccezionale (Tommy Caldwell) che la affronta in modo diverso, è molto interessante, anche per la vita e le esperienze incredibili vissute da Caldwell. Poi se uno vuole riassumerli in "gente che vuole morire giovane", amen... me ne farò una ragione, ma secondo me non sono semplicemente degli irresponsabili bambinoni con istinti suicidi, come non lo è Atherton.
"The slabs" è anche secondo me girato meglio, c'è più riding e meno "dietro le quinte" ed è semplicemente spettacolare e più rifinito come prodotto.
Di questo Ridgeline secondo me è impareggiabile la qualità di quella singola sequenza che hanno fatto al tramonto, luce clamorosa, ripresa pazzesca.
Peccato che si perda un po' in mezzo a un montaggio raffazzonato e che non si capisce che messaggio voglia dare, forse è più un video sul quanto sia difficile portare a casa una sequenza in quell'ambiente che incentrato sul riding di per se.
Il resto per me sono considerazioni appunto irrilevanti, hanno rischiato entrambi moltissimo per portare a casa questi video, ma sono fattacci loro, li ammiro come rider, e fine della storia, è solo delle illazioni su come e quando si faranno male o si ammazzeranno che sono stufo. Liberissimi tutti di continuare a scriverle, come sono libero io di dire che mi hanno rotto i cosiddetti. :prost: