Red Bull athlete Fabio Wibmer is no stranger to a jaw-dropping edit. His mountain bike films have racked up millions of views on YouTube and include his Grand Theft Auto-inspired Video Game, and Street Life, a collaboration with Crankbrothers which celebrated his Stamp Street Fabio shoe collection.
The Austrian MTB trials riding star has now launched his latest video project ‘Fabio Wibmer – The Streif’, and it might just be his most death-defying mountain biking adventure to date, riding on ice and snow at one of the toughest and steepest downhill ski runs in the world – The Strief.
The Strief is located in Kitzbühel, Austria, which is only an hour from Wibmer's home village, and is home to the Hahnenkamm – a downhill ski race which carries a fearsome reputation. It starts at an elevation of 1,665m and drops to the finish at 805m in just 3km, making it extremely steep, with the Mausefalle section, the steepest part of the course, having a maximum grade of 85 percent. It sees the bravest of downhill skiers reach speeds of up to 140-145kp/h, with the highest speed recorded at 153kp/h set by Michael Walchhofer in 2006.
To say Fabio was setting the bar high by riding a mountain bike down the Strief is an understatement.
The mountain bike in question for Fabio's latest challenge was a custom Canyon Torque which has recently seen updated models released as the direct-to-consumer brand improved its popular freeride MTB range. Wibmer and his team had to modify his Torque to take on the challenges of the extremely steep and ice-covered slopes and they added a total of 576 spikes to his Pirelli Scorpion tires on both the front and back wheels to enhance the grip and combat the massively steep gradient of the Strief. See our bike check on Fabio's Torque for more details.
The edit opens with Fabio performing a huge backflip from the top of the famous start gate right onto the icy and snowy piste. He then leaps from a TV camera tower onto the infamous Mausefalle, the perilous section of the slope with its incredible 85 percent gradient.
The run also includes a wallride along a safety net, which is a nod to the infamous run of Bode Miller from the 2008 Kitzbühel World Cup. The American skier performed an incredible wall ride to avoid what would have been a massive crash, having been going so fast that he missed a corner. Fabio has said this incident had a huge impact on him and influenced him greatly while planning the idea for the edit.
His unique freestyle descent continues and sees Wibmer reaching a maximum speed of 107km/h, switching between mind-blowing action and some tongue-in-cheek moments. He lands multiple jumps including some of the Strief's most iconic spots, with some jumps hitting heights of 14m and 36m in length. There's one more giant backflip on the Hausbergkante before he reaches his optimal speed for the run to the finish.
Watch the video above which sets the scene for the 84th Hahnenkamm ski weekend that begins on Friday, January 19th.
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