Meet the Red Bull Rampage rookies:
The Utah native grew up just outside of Salt Lake City in Bluffdale and was on his first bike at 6 years old. He competed in BMX for 7 years and transitioned to full-suspension bikes at 13. Downhill racing became his focus, and he raced throughout the country. He was on track to take the more conventional path, but an airbag and mulch jump would change his course. At 17 years old, Parish attended Wy’east Mountain Academy, a boarding school geared towards action sports athletes. He enrolled as a downhill racer, but felt the gravitational pull to freeride. Any free time was spent at the airbag and mulch jump. He especially loved learning no-foot and no-hand tricks like Superman, Japan airs, Cliff Hangers, and Heel Clickers. “I take a lot of inspiration from [motocross],” he says.
In 2023, he competed at the U.S. Open for downhill and concluded that it was his final race competing as a DH racer. A month later, he affirmed that decision when he was crowned “King of the Castle” at the In the Hills Gang’s Green River Classic, which is an open registration, all-inclusive freeride event. At the 2025 Cam Zink Invitational, he placed first in the big mountain competition and won the overall title.
After graduating from high school, Parish moved to Hurricane, Utah, to be in the epicenter of freeride. He’s called the area home for two years, and relishes having such incredible terrain right in his backyard. “Being in this [region] has helped me become more creative as a digger and an athlete,” he says. “It’s the biggest stage for freeride mountain biking,” he says.
In 2024, he furthered his Red Bull Rampage aspirations by being part of Vaea Verbeeck’s dig team. “I honestly didn’t think I’d get in this year, but if you put in the hard work, it will pay off,” he says.
Being among the 18 riders still feels surreal for the rookie, but he’s also ready to get to work and is already scheming his top-to-bottom line. His wishlist includes a gnarly feature off the top, keeping it raw and exposed, a big drop, and a trick jump either higher on the ridge or at the bottom.
Hailing from Vernon, British Columbia, 22-year-old Hayden Zablotny is making his mark in freeride mountain biking. His foray into bikes came early in life. His dad, a Canadian BMX legend, Pete Zablotny, introduced him to BMX at 5 years old.
Zablotny was hooked and raced BMX until discovering mountain bikes at 12. “I always knew mountain biking was what I wanted to do for a job,” he reflects. Downhill racing came next. He competed in the BC Cup Downhill Series, but there were inklings that freeride might be his calling. At races, he was more likely to search out the jumps and session them than practice the race course.
Zablotny was an avid fan of the classic New World Disorder films. He couldn’t get enough of the jump segments. At 16, he noticed a crop of athletes from British Columbia competing at Red Bull Rampage, which got the wheels turning. From that point onwards, Hayden had the competition as his north star. “Envisioning something, building it, and then riding it, is what I love to do—so Rampage felt like the best event for me,” he explains.
The Canadian’s final pivot to freeride came at 17 when the COVID-19 pandemic put racing on hold. In 2020, there were no downhill races, but there was one event he could compete in: Tom Van Steenbergen’s slopestyle competition at Big White. Even though he had never competed in the discipline, Zablotny dropped in to give it a try. He competed in the bronze category, which had a mulch jump at the end of the course. He used that as an excuse to learn a backflip, aspiring to land a backflip in his run. The process of learning that trick ignited the desire to keep progressing, and Zablotny hasn’t looked back. “I fell in love with that process,” he explains.
An avid digger, Hayden is just as passionate about building as he is riding. Growing up, he didn’t have access to a dirt jump park. Instead, he had a shovel and vacant land to create his own features. When he was 13, he came across some abandoned features built by a pro rider, and he resurrected the jumps. As his talent grew, so did the jumps. “If I wanted a bigger jump, I had to go build it,” he says. Rampage felt like a natural goal for him, as all he’s ever wanted to do is build and ride.
He’s excited to build at Rampage because of how malleable the soil is for creating unique features. His perfect line would be a fresh build on a blank canvas, full of massive tricks and big features. “I’d like to showcase what I have to offer,” he says, and is elated to secure a spot on the roster.
Finley Kirchenmann was 8 when he attended and watched his first Red Bull Rampage competition live. 10 years later, he’s joining the list of riders to drop in. With roots in BMX, downhill, and slopestyle, Kirchenmann is a stylish force to be reckoned with.
Kirchenmann was first on a bike at the age of 5, and dabbled between downhill and BMX riding. He started to race downhill at the age of 9 and continued to race for 6 years. “Biking is one of the parts of who I am as a huma,n and it means a lot to me,” he explains. He competed throughout the Northwest Cups, but at 15, he pivoted to slopestyle. For the next two years, he competed on the Gold FMB circuit, participating in Red Bull Roof Ride, the Big White Slopestyle, and Silverstar. This year, though, he fully committed to freeride with Red Bull Rampage as his main riding focus. “I’ve always had freeride though,” he reflects. Throughout competing in all the other disciplines, he’s always found freeriding to be an escape. While he loves all aspects of freeriding, he’s drawn to riding creative features.
Growing up in the Salt Lake City region, the red desert was ever present in his imagination. Many weekends and weeks in the fall were spent south, riding at the old Rampage venues. “I’ve always wanted to do Red Bull Rampage,” he reflects. Two years ago he moved to southern Utah for the winters to hone his skills. In 2024, he was a digger for Cami Nogueria and it was his first time building at the event. Given how much time he’s spent in the area, it felt natural to dig.
Beyond the desert, Kirchenmann is making his mark in the industry. Earlier this year he competed in the Natural Selection Dream Ticket event, which awarded two standout riders a spot at the Natural Selection Bike Aotearoa competition. Kirchenmann scored the ticket with a massive cork 720, going on to win the Best Style Award at the main show. He then won the Best Moment award with pal Talus Turk at the 2025 Darkfest. The two 2025 Rampage competitors impressed their peers with a crazy train of tricks on some of the biggest jumps in mountain biking.
His goal heading into Red Bull Rampage is to keep having fun. Some of his biggest inspirations for riding have come from skiers like Sammy Carlson and Matej Svancer because they ski for themselves and prioritize having fun. He’s hoping to have a creative line with a little bit of everything: steeps, jumps, and drops. Former Rampage competitor Graham Aggasiz is one of his biggest inspirations, and he hopes to build a line that emulates his style. “He was the first rider I met at Rampage,” Kirchenmann recalls. The two even camped near each other at the event. A decade later, the Rampage veteran will be digging for Kirchenmann, helping him achieve his goals.
Lemoine first started riding at the age of 5, and some of his earliest bike memories were exploring the streets of Marseille by BMX with his dad. He dove into BMX racing, winning the European Championships at 10 and finishing 3rd at the World Championships at 8. While he was succeeding within BMX racing, he wasn’t a fan of the racing atmosphere. One day while riding dirt BMX, he connected with a group of mountain bikers who invited him to watch a slopestyle competition. Right there and then, Lemoine switched to slopestyle at the age of 11. His father gifted him his first slopestyle bike. From there, he steadily built a name for himself, branching into Speed & Style and Pumptrack. He achieved his loftiest goal of making the Red Bull Joyride podium in 2022 with a run he considers the best of his career. It was a run full of incredible tricks, but what made him stand out was his bold decision to completely air over the last feature. The feat broke the internet and earned him the People’s Champion award.
In 2023, Lemoine stepped away from slopestyle, feeling that he had given everything he could to the competition. Ultimately, he didn’t want to be defined solely as a slopestyle rider, and after competing at many of the same events for years, the 28-year-old was ready to change things up. “I needed to feel like a rookie again,” he explains. “I always wanted to do Red Bull Rampage and I knew I needed to give more time to bigger bikes, and this opened my mind to other new goals.”
In this new chapter, Red Bull Rampage has been his north star. He’s spent more and more time in the desert and feels at home on his downhill bike. This year, he also rode at Darkfest, ticking off a 108-foot jump—the biggest he’s ever hit. But getting the 2025 Red Bull Rampage invite feels like the culmination of years of hard work. “I hope I can show my own way to ride, feel stoked on the way down and hopefully make it in one piece, make myself and my people happy,” he explains about his process going into his inaugural year.
The format of Rampage has always intrigued Lemoine. The process of visualizing, building, and riding a unique line fascinates him. One of his favorite parts of competing in slopestyle was showing up to a new course and having to interpret it. He’s excited to apply this skillset to the desert. “[My goal with freeride] is to go big and stop only when my whole body can’t move. I love biking and I still get ideas like when I was a kid,” he says, brimming with excitement for this next step in his career.
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