Monday Motivation: Urban Downhill Riding in the Streets of Valparaiso in Chile /w Fabio Wibmer
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Fabio Wibmer gave the bike community the opportunity to decide the location for his latest YouTube edit and he ended up in one of the most fascinating places on earth to ride a bike – Valparaíso, Chile.
In ‘Urban Freeride Lives Chile’ Fabio Wibmer travels on request of his fans to an iconic location for a thrilling display of urban riding.
Usually planning his videos for months in advance behind closed doors, this time Wibmer took a different approach and brought his community along for the ride by letting them both choose the location and discover behind-the-scenes content from the whole filming process.
It would prove to be quite the adventure and in classic Wibmer style, he creatively explores every inch of the city on two wheels, combining technical tricks and big jumps with downhill speed.
Not even having parts of their camera equipment and footage being stolen could dent their love and fascination for a country full of colour, generosity, and culture!
Here is all you need to know:
– Watch Urban Freeride Lives Chile here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulbYX-smndk
– Wibmer’s ‘holiday’ in Valparaíso, Chile starts with him wearing a loud colourful shirt on a bus to the top of the steep city.
– From there, the 27-year-old hurtles down to the coastline taking every route possible including rooftops, walls, jumps, steps, ramps and even riding through the centre of an unsuspecting house.
– Wibmer said: “The whole concept was to take the community with me when filming the project. People decided for Chile, we got our stuff, flew, and the adventure started.
– “Chile was very new to us, usually we prepare a video project for weeks and months, and this was the big difference to my other projects as we didn’t know where we were going beforehand.”
– Valparaíso is no stranger to hosting biking spectacles with Red Bull Valparaíso an annual competition attracting many of the best riders in the world to take on the creative 2.4km course.
– Early on in filming the crew’s camera equipment and previously filmed footage was stolen, a setback which made front page news in the country!
– Despite this challenge, Wibmer loved meeting the passionate bike community in Chile. He said: “Chile is such a nice place! We met so many really nice people who brought us water and helped us build things by bringing us tools of things which took an insane amount of effort but it was crazy how many people helped us realise this project.”
– One of the biggest challenges of the entire shoot was a steep jump down some steps onto a slide landing which was only 30cm wide. Wibmer explains: “It was a jump where either I was going to make it, or it was going to be a very bad ending.”
– The Austrian rode a Canyon Torque CF Fabio Wibmer bike during filming.
– Previous Urban Freeride Lives videos have collectively amassed more than 410 million views on YouTube alone since the first one in Salzburg, Austria in 2017.
