Robbie Maddison...Spectacular Showman!
Monday, December 19, 2016 at 3:36PM Look, Ma, No Wheels
Motocross star Robbie Maddison has conquered earth, wind and water on his dirt bike. His next quest? The snow at X Games Aspen.
It's been nearly five years since Australian motocross star Robbie Maddison took on freestyle courses at the X Games. But when he makes his return at X Games Aspen 2017 (Jan. 26-29), he won't be kicking up dirt -- he'll be making tracks in the snow.
Maddison will be one of 16 riders debuting Snow BikeCross, a motocross-style, closed-course competition featuring rollers, banked turns and jumps. The first rider to the finish wins. "It's going to be a stacked field," says Maddison, a freestyle motocross champion famous for his groundbreaking stunts. "I'm excited to get back to racing, to how I started in motocross."
Snow bike is, in fact, only the latest in a series of innovations by Maddison that have prolonged his career. At 35, an age when most freestyle riders have retired from competition or traded two wheels for four, he is as relevant as ever. One of the most creative action sports athletes, he's won freestyle titles, set Guinness world records for distance-jumping his dirt bike and executed some of the most audacious motorcycle stunts since Evel Knievel. He has jumped onto a replica of the Arc de Triomphe in Las Vegas, backflipped London's Tower Bridge and launched across the Corinth Canal in Greece.
But it was a life-altering crash four and a half years ago that led him to rethink the potential of his machine. In 2012, while practicing for Moto X Speed & Style at X Games Los Angeles, he crashed in the whoops section and broke several ribs, one of which collapsed a lung and pushed against his aorta. "I almost died there on the dirt," Maddison says. "The doctors said, 'You'll never ride a motorcycle again. You need to change your lifestyle.' I spent a week in the hospital feeling totally demoralized and contemplating my future." After months of intense physical therapy, Maddison defied the doctors and got back onto his bike. But he decided competing in freestyle was no longer worth the risk. Instead, while at his home in Australia the following winter, he rekindled a thought he'd had many times before while surfing and wakeboarding. "I'm fascinated by the way water moves around boats," Maddison says. "My mind started wandering. I knew with the right speed and the right skis, water has enough surface tension that I should be able to ride my dirt bike on water."
Enter Bill King, a former rocket scientist who as VP of 2Moto engineered one of the first snow conversion kits for dirt bikes. King flew from Boise to Maddison's home in California, looked at his sketches of a ski attached to the front and back wheels of his dirt bike and declared, "This will work." After experimenting with various bike manufacturers and several design modifications, Maddison rode a KTM 300 XC two-stroke 7½ miles across California's Lake Elsinore. Once he proved it possible to ride a motorcycle on water for long distances, he set his sights on the seemingly impossible.
After two years of endless trial and error, countless failures and dozens of sunk bikes, Maddison and DC Shoes released Pipe Dream in August 2015. The action sports video features him surfing his KTM on Tahiti's Teahupo'o, known as the heaviest wave in the world. The video has about 25 million YouTube views. "That project solidified to me having the confidence to follow my passions," he says. "It excites me to think about what's possible as human beings. What else am I capable of? That's the question I wake up with most days."
Pipe Dream reinvigorated Maddison's career. In the spring, he got a call from D.J. Caruso, the director of xXx: Return of Xander Cage, the Vin Diesel action movie due out in January. Caruso invited Maddison, who had previously doubled James Bond in Skyfall, to bring his moto surfer to the Dominican Republic. He wanted Maddison to re-create his water bike stunts for the film. One small problem: Maddison looks nothing like Vin Diesel. A bigger problem: No one else could maneuver the machine. So Maddison shaved his head and donned a muscle suit to double Diesel racing across waves on a dirt bike.
Now Maddison is shooting Pipe Dream 2 on a second-generation version of his water bike, with plans to release the first footage around Christmas-before he shifts his attention from water to snow. He's proved he can surf on a dirt bike; now he'll see how he stacks up racing one on snow against some of the best motocross riders in the world.
"I'm trying to ride every terrain possible," he says. "I'm returning to X Games with a lot on my shoulders. I haven't been the most successful X Games athlete-I only have one medal. I've had a lot of injuries. But I don't have the ability to give up in my DNA."
