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How Red Bull Crashed Ice became the fastest sport on skates

A brand new winter sport thrust itself into the spotlight in 2001, when the inaugural Red Bull Crashed Ice took over Stockholm, giving the world its thrilling first taste of ice cross downhill.

Written by Red Bull

2 min readPublished on 17.04.2019 · 10:03 UTC

A bunch of intrepid athletes from around the world donned their hockey skates and gazed down a terrifying-looking, twisting 300m chute constructed from tons of ice sourced from the local fish market, which featured bumps, banks and slalom gates. None of them had a clue what they were in for, but they understood the message – let's race down the course flat out and the fastest to the bottom is the winner.

Little did they know on that day in the centre of Sweden's capital city, Stockholm, that they were all in at the start of the Red Bull Crashed Ice revolution, the first rough-and-ready edition of what was to become one of the most exciting winter sports. Now in its 19th year, it's one of the fastest-growing winter sports, too.

Indeed, Red Bull Crashed Ice has grown into such a phenomenon that earlier in 2019 it enjoyed an incredible stadium debut at one of the great cathedrals of US sport, Fenway, home of the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

With a host of events being staged around the world, men's and women's world championships to fight for, and athletes now hitting speeds of up to 75kph as they jostle thrillingly down immaculately-prepared and increasingly demanding courses, we've come a long way from that inaugural event. On that day, just two women featured among a cast largely consisting of male hockey players.

Everyone could see the potential of Red Bull Crashed Ice however, including the first race winner, American-Swede Jasper Felder, a US international at the hockey-like sport of bandy. "What a great event. It feels kind of unreal!" he exclaimed as he clutched his $5,000 cheque for winning. He went on to claim victory in the first six editions of the event.