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What makes Red Bull Hardline the toughest downhill race out there?
Terrifying drops, massive gaps, brutal rock gardens and raw terrain in Wales and Tasmania. This is downhill pushed to its absolute limit.
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Red Bull Hardline is famous as the world’s most challenging downhill mountain bike race, blending brutal natural terrain with mammoth jumps, sheer drops and relentless technical sections. Designed to push riders beyond what they’d face on a traditional UCI World Cup track, the course has evolved since its 2014 inception in Wales’ Dyfi Valley and now includes a second equally gnarly edition in Tasmania, Australia.
Ahead of Red Bull Hardline Tasmania 2026 on February 7-8, here’s a beginner’s guide to what makes Red Bull Hardline live up to its name.
01
Epic vertical drops that define Hardline’s difficulty
The Dyfi Valley course is known for its gigantic drops
© Nathan Hughes/Red Bull Content Pool
Both the Welsh and Tasmanian courses feature more than 500m of vertical drop, and while there’s plenty of vertigo-inducing gradients to tackle, there are also some chunky drops for riders to navigate as they make their way down the mountain.
With the Welsh course’s redesign in 2024, riders no longer have to face the wooded top section and the mossy, slick rock drop that put a dent in numerous race runs over the years, but there’s still plenty of controlled falling to contend with.
Instead of a boggy forest to start their run, riders are kept on the exposed mountainside and funnelled into a chute that spits them into a tight, twisting section of trail lined by ferns, where getting the landing wrong could end with an abrupt meeting with a tree.
The top section of the Tasmanian track is also home to its own suspension-testing vertical drops. A section christened the Giant’s Steps get the rear shock working from the off, culminating in a 3m drop. But this is just a warm-up for the Cliff – a sheer rock face that, while it only has a relatively short gap, plummets 10m to a near-vertical landing, with entry speed critical to not overshooting and bottoming out.
02
Massive gap jumps that push riders to the limit
Hannah Bergemann takes on one of the infamous gap jumps at Hardline Wales
© Nathan Hughes/Red Bull Content Pool
If the vertical drops aren’t enough of a challenge, the huge gaps on both courses are enough to leave even the most experienced riders quaking in their boots.
The Welsh course set the bar high with its iconic road gap, where participants commit to a blind plunge off a northshore-style take-off down to the landing below, and the jumps have only increased in size over the years.
The back-to-back 30m gaps at the course’s midpoint requiring riders to carry serious speed to even clear the landing’s lip, while the final section is also littered with huge doubles, including the Final Fly Off – a log take-off that propels them into the finish field and their first glimpse of the line. There are limits though, as the 2024 course’s abandoned canyon gap proved.
Tasmania doesn't have the huge gaps, but riders still get plenty of airtime
© Graeme Murray/Red Bull Content Pool
While the Australian edition can’t compete with its Welsh older sibling in the sheer size of gaps, it makes up for it in the quantity of jumps, which come to the fore at the midway point – just as the lactic acid has reached boiling point in the rider’s arms. The split lines of the supercross section allow athletes to find air and the fastest route down the mountain as speeds hit almost 70kph, and things only ramp up from there.
Tasmania too has its own road gap, while the finish field was extended for 2025, cramming in a seemingly endless run of mindbendingly-big doubles and a tabletop lily pad feature reminiscent of the one in Wales before crescendoing to a final, 75ft gap down to the line.
03
Rough terrain and unpredictable grip test balance and reaction speed
Treacherous rock gardens are a key feature of the Welsh venue
© Nathan Hughes/Red Bull Content Pool
Although they might not have the same wow-factor as the drops and the jumps on paper, the technical sections of each course are often where a race is won and lost, with rock gardens, tight turns and line choice all integral to maintaining momentum before the tracks open up at the end.
From the start hut, both the Tasmanian and Welsh tracks are littered with boulders and tyre-shredding jagged rocks to contend with. In a UCI World Cup course, these would be considered a rock garden feature; at Hardline, they’re par for the course and just the trail litter you have to surf as you attempt to tame the track.
The dust-covered rocks of Tasmania present a different challenge
© Nick Waygood/Red Bull Content Pool
The most notorious technical section of the Welsh course is the rock garden just before the road gap – many race runs have come unstuck as riders have ground to a halt on the jumbled, slick slate, unclipping and dabbing a foot down for stability.
Australia has its own rock garden towards the top of the course – the spot where Jackson Goldstone’s 2024 race run and season came crashing down after he went off course and crashed into a tree – but its lower sections aren’t a walk in the park either, with the Whoops’ bermed esses a spot that can catch a rider out.
04
Geology that seems designed to punish mistakes
The dust of Maydena Bike Park turns to slick, silty mud in the rain
© Nick Waygood/Red Bull Content Pool
It’s not just the courses’ features that go harder than anything found on the UCI World Cup circuit, but the settings themselves add to the jeopardy of a race run. A million miles from the groomed, smooth lines of an Alpine bike park, both the Dyfi Valley and Maydena Bike Park tracks are extremely raw with the natural terrain coming to the fore.
In Wales, that means a bedrock top section that shows no mercy, while a rugged second half is pockmarked with boulders ready to crack any unsuspecting rims and carbon fibre frames.
Tasmania’s geology meanwhile changes three times during the 2.8km course, but the trail has a rocky, hardpacked base covered in a slippery layer of silt and sand. Flanked by towering ancient trees and ferns, the rainforest setting is one of the most unique riding locations in the world.
05
Why even the world’s best riders struggle at Hardline
The Welsh venue is notorious for its unpredictable weather
© Dan Griffiths/Red Bull Content Pool
If all of this wasn’t hard enough, Mother Nature can amp things up even more, with the weather on race day adding to the carnage.
Red Bull Hardline Wales has seen it all over the years, from a sunbaked 2021 to torrential rain in 2017, while finals were even cancelled in 2023 due to wind. And even if the finals start in perfect conditions, the exposed nature of the course means things can quickly change, altering the track with every run.
While Red Bull Hardline Tasmania’s timing at the end of the Australian summer means that conditions aren’t as variable as the Welsh original, the tropical setting brings its own challenges. In the debut edition, the jungle environment kept the top section loose and loamy, making it hard for riders to get traction on the more technical parts of the track. This had firmed up by 2025, making the course even faster. Rain in the build-up can change everything though, turning the dusty topsoil into silt, and making the rocks ride like ice.
More must-watch bike events
06
How to watch Red Bull Hardline live
Red Bull Hardline Tasmania is coming up on February 7-8: you can watch the finals action live in the player above or via the Red Bull TV event page.
Keep your eye out for details of other Red Bull Hardline events later in the year, and in the mean time, why not check out Jackson Goldstone's incredible winning run from Tasmania in 2025?
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