Diesel and Dust

By Ben Smithurst  

Australian mountain biker Nathan Rennie jumps further than anyone ever has before in heart of the ancient, fly-blown Painted Desert - but things don't all go to plan...

Flick! Flick! The thick-set bloke in the helmet swats his big log of an arm past his face for surely the millionth time this morning, and a black cloud of flies erupts around him. The air seems too thin and hot to breathe, let along support flight, but the insects don't stay up for long. They're aloft for precisely two seconds before settling in exactly the same place they'd taken off from, which is right across Nathan Rennie's face. It's almost midday and the ramp for Rennie's world record attempt is being set up for the second time, exactly 180-degrees from the direction in which they set it up yesterday.

The original run in was too sketchy. Shirtless and caked in dust, Rennie is sweating like a horse.
"How many flies do you reckon you've eaten so far, Nath?"
"None," he says, pausing. "None - that I know of. But they know that if they come, I'm not afraid to just eat them. Instead of trying to spit them out, I'd rather just swallow them."
The 6'3", 95kg former World Cup downhill mountain bike champ's assault on Colin Winkleman's 116ft record will be just as ruthless. In the end he'll manage to chew a chunk out of it - unofficially - but then, it'll also nibble a little piece out of him...

Flies are thick in the cattle country air of central Australia. Rennie's in the Painted Desert, 140km from Coober Pedy. He's in the dead centre of the dead heart of central Australia. Fifty miles away Mel Gibson filmed Mad Max 3, and not much further than that NASA are testing the space suits they're planning to wear on Mars. The 24-year-old has been here for the best part of a week, but he's been planning his mission for a lot longer.

"I've been pretty keen on getting something happening for a couple of years, really," he says. "I've known the record existed since I saw it in a BMX magazine - and then when we were on a freeride trip across Australia last year I asked the Red Bull guys about it. From there I've pretty much just been pestering them. 'C'mon... it'd be good to do... it'd be so much fun, hint hint... let's do it!' And now, here we are!"

Any doubts about how seriously Rennie is taking his attempt quickly dissolve when the crew he's assembled are taken into consideration. Twenty people have arrived in the middle of nowhere to join him, including three from the Guinness Book Of Records, medical staff, ramp technicians and a photographer with a 60-camera scaffold rig (that takes Matrix-style 360 degree pics). It's a serious operation.

BMX legend Colin Winkleman set his mark in 2000, on billiard-table-flat tarmac and pulled in by a motorbike. Rennie's worked with ramp designer Mike Shaw to custom build his own nine-metre long, three-metre high ramp. He wants to clear a whopping 150ft. He's being whipped in by motocross rider Robbie Maddisson, himself the world record holder for a long distance jump on a 125cc motorbike. Maddo also looks the part, missing a tooth after smashing his face through his full-face helmet on the Australian Crusty Demons tour a few weeks earlier.

Rennie is psyched, and if anyone can further Winkleman's effort, the precisely-skilled low-flyer is the man. But Rennie has more to deal with than he'd expected: the re-aligned ramp is configured with a 10-foot step up, robbing him of precious distance, and the in-run, though straight, is on gravel and dust.

Undeterred, they set the first gap at 60 feet. "We're going to start off fairly small," he says. "If we get it right in the first place then we should be able to just go back a few feet and then up the speed little kilometres each time, and then break the record and walk away all fine and dandy.

"The only thing that's different with changing the direction of the ramp is that I'll probably have to go faster. Otherwise I would have had a little bit more dropping time and that would have made the record a lot easier.

His first jump didn't go at all to plan. Letting go of the tow-rope at just 60km/h, Rennie came up short, and was forced to bail in mid air. His bike slammed sickeningly into the face of the ramp, like a bird into a picture window, but Rennie somehow managed to level his body out in mid air and just scrape over the plywood lip. The smear of blood from his elbow started just inches from the unpadded edge. And with a buckled front wheel as a result, Rennie had to wait overnight with the memory of it nagging him as much as the plague-thick mosquitoes. "Starting off with your first jump as a crash, you can't get much worse, right?" he said. "So I can only go up from here."

And yet, a few hours into the next day everything's going to plan. Each time Rennie nails to another jump consistently, they pull back the ramp and bump up his intro speed. So what's it like, coming into a jump faster than you could ever hope to peddle?
"Oh, it's pretty much the same thing, with extra speed," grins Rennie, scoffing a muesli bar. "You just have to hold on with one hand and get pulled up to speed, then look down at the speedo to see what you're doing. But when it comes to jumping the jump, it's basically the same thing as always..."

Roost from Maddo's back wheel is pelting Rennie in the face, but more of a problem is the emerging fact that physics seem to be against him. Nailing an 86-footer - itself a mountain bike record - Rennie realises that he's only getting about another foot of distance per km/h they add to his speedo. Thing is, with all the rest of it, he's not sure he can hang on at 116-plus km/h to beat Winlkeman's mark. "I'm feeling everything, dude," he says, "I'm just getting roosted, I'm drifting sideways..." An angry, bleeding welt has opened up on his shin where a stone made it past his body armour, and it's already the size of a golf ball.

So they add another 10 feet to the distance and jack up the ramp to give it a pinch more pop - and, almost unexpectedly, Rennie makes history. He hits the ramp at an incredible 96km/h, soars through heaven and lands momentarily in hell - overshooting the downramp.

He crashes into the flats 121.2 feet away. When Rennie is in the saddle the wheels are an extension of his body, and he tries to ride out, to make it official, but the downforce is too great. Nobody has ever gone as far. And with a slightly-separated shoulder, he's done. But he's also hooting: "YEEEEEAHHH!"

"I didn't realise at the time that I was going 96km/h - I was meant to hit the ramp at about 93," he says, afterwards. "It just so happened that 96 was a little bit too fast, and we landed on the flat, which isn't the ideal situation. Going 121 feet at 96km/h onto the flat ground... you know, you're in for trouble. I just couldn't hold it together. I always thought I had it - but it's just a couple of inches that comes in your way of riding away. But I'll take it, it's okay."

"But," says Maddo, "we've learnt a lot for next time."
"That's right," nods Rennie, "so if anyone wants to come and try and take my mark, good luck to them. But know this: I'll be back. I'll be coming to get them! With what I've learned, I reckon I can go 150, easy."

By the time we made it back into Coober Pedy a day and a half later, Rennie's jump had already Chinese whispered its way there. "A guy just broke a world record out at the Painted Desert," the service station guy told us. "But he hit the landing ramp so hard that he smashed right through it! A helicopter had to take him to hospital."
"Is that right?" said Rennie, wearing his Red Bull hat. "Sounds pretty crazy."
"Too right," said the guy.

Text and images courtesy of Red Bull.Images copyright Mark Watson/Red Bull Photofiles.