What makes it so risky?
Well, it’s probably the most difficult track in Colombia because it’s technical as hell. It’s really challenging, you must know your limits, and you have to know your skills and capabilities, because the jumps are huge in some parts. And maybe at times the jumps aren’t huge, but you still need to carry speed to keep the flow. So in order to keep that flow, to do the jumps, you need to commit and if you commit the wrong way the consequences are bad.
How long did it actually take you to ride it and when did it take place?
It didn’t take that long to ride it but it was definitely scary! It was mid-October; it took us a couple of hours to get through it. But to get comfy and feel good with the jumps it took us a few hours to do a few runs.
Any fall, issue, moment when you felt like you wouldn’t manage to achieve it?
There weren’t that many moments where I was scared or almost crashed, but the trickiest part was when it rained, so to jump the barrels, gaps, we felt a bit scared and we had to stop the filming because it was risky in wet conditions. That was probably the scariest part. When we were inside the salt mine, we couldn’t see what was coming, the visibility was terrible as it was super dark, scary as hell! With the goggles, with all the lights we had on… It was so hard to see what was coming! I was confused and thinking, what am I doing? What did I get myself into? It was cool though; I went beyond my limits and my fears even if I was scared. But then I thought, well, we’re here, let’s try to make this happen. Let’s try to make the best of it.
And the feedback you got from Colombian people?
That was funny! People were surprised and amazed with the level of track we were riding. It was funny to hear stories of people who had been there and tried the track and kept crashing as the track it so hard. It’s cool to see people enjoying it, to see people trying the track.
How important was this for you as a rider, and as a Colombian person?
I would say it was important a Colombian citizen! It was important to have a project like this, at home, in my home country, home soil. It was also so important and beautiful to be able to show the world a bit of my country, a bit of my culture. That’s the culture part of it, but if we consider the sport part, the first side is that our sport is not that well known and the second part is the ability to give our people, our riders, a track where they challenge themselves to ride the whole thing. They are going to have to fight against their fears.
