This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Utah's National Parks may have been shut down last week, but that didn't stop the Red Bull Rampage from turning southern Utah into a playground for insane bicycle acrobatics.
The Red Bull Rampage — which began Friday and wrapped up Sunday in Virgin, Utah — features mountain bikers plummeting down steep red cliffs and soaring off wicked jumps. Kyle Strait took first place in the competition and Kelly McGarry nabbed second.
But for sheer entertainment value, Cam Zink's third-place run takes the cake. Zink — who spectacularly crashed in 2010 — begins his run by going straight down a mountainside. Then, about 38 seconds into the video, he rides off a ramp on the hill, does a backflip, and lands. The announcers in the video go wild.
In order to really see the jump it may be useful to make the video full screen or watch it a couple of times, as the jump is so big that the camera had to be zoomed way out to capture it all.
It's also worth mentioning that with the government shutdown and resulting National Park closures, the Red Bull Rampage was one of the major draws last week in economically hard-hit Springdale. In fact, several of the people I interviewed for stories were actually in town for the competition.
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