Red Bull Imagination has become one of the biggest events in freestyle motocross in recent years, and the 2023 edition showcased exactly why.
“The ultimate dirt bike playground,” is how the Red Bull Imagination course is described by Tyler Bereman, one of the most prominent contemporary FMX riders. The event was Bereman’s brainchild, and the 2023 edition is the fourth since it began in 2019.
The advantage of having a freestyle motocross rider play a central role in the design of the course is obvious: Bereman knows exactly what he and his fellow riders are looking for to pull off the gnarliest, most spectacular, most technical tricks, and is therefore able to plan out a course that allows each of the riders taking part absolute creativity and expression.
Imagination takes place within the format of competition, but the result is secondary to the experience and the artistic creations of each of the riders, and the excitement generated by watching them pull off the biggest, craziest tricks they can think of.
Each of the riders were assigned to two teams, managed by 17-time X-Games medallist and FMX legend Jeremy ‘Twitch’ Stenberg; and fellow X-Games medallist and doer of many ridiculous things on dirt bikes (including one of the first in-competition ‘body varials’), Robbie Maddison.
Stenberg’s team had Vicki Golden, Josh Hill (who also raced in this year’s AMA Supercross 450SX series and qualified, thanks to his performances there, for the SuperMotocross World Championship Finals), Julien Vanstippen, Guillem Navas Petit and Christian Dresser; while Maddison’s featured Bereman himself, Patrick Evans, Kohl Denney, Tom Parsons and Brian McCarty. Maddison’s team was cut short, though, as a crash for McCarty during one of the ‘expression sessions’ (practice, essentially) that preceded the competition-proper ruled him out.
The riders were scored in five categories: “Creative Line”, “Speed and Style”, “Big Dawg”, “Best Whip”, and “Team Jam”.
We’ll leave it up to you to find out the result by watching the full Red Bull Imagination show below.
Image credit: Red Bull Content Pool.
