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The puzzle that wasn't meant to be built
Murray Loubser walked into a working concrete casting yard and saw a playground. Then he found out he could move the pieces. Here's how Cape Concrete came together — slab by impossible slab.
The first time Murray Loubser walked through the Cape Concrete grounds, he felt like a kid in a candy shop.
To most people, a concrete casting factory is exactly that: a place that makes concrete. But Loubser doesn't look at the built world the way most people do. Where others see an industrial yard, South Africa's most innovative street rider sees lines.
“To the normal eye, people just see a concrete object and think, this factory produces a lot of concrete,” he says. “But to a rider, it's a playground. There are so many different concrete objects with angles you can play with, slopes to ride, edges to grind. My brain was just going.”
And then he found the unlock. A whole new dimension
Most spots are fixed. A handrail is where it is; a ledge stays put. But the casting yard came with cranes, forklifts and a gantry crane rated to shift around 15 tonnes — which meant the furniture of the place could be rearranged at will.
Murray Loubser stuns at Red Bull Cape Concrete Social First Project
© Keenan Meyer / Red Bull Content Pool
“Once I found out we could actually move objects, it just opened another whole dimension,” Loubser says. “Normally you can't move a tonne of concrete, but they had the equipment to move things around. I was just buzzing, honestly. I thought of so many ideas within the first half an hour that would probably keep you busy for a year.”
That's the premise of Cape Concrete, the new project that drops Loubser into the yard alongside Greek phenom George Ntavoutian — the rider who last year conquered the world's biggest vertical loop. Two world-class riders, one factory, and permission to build. The catch: thinking it and riding it are very different things.
George Ntavoutian defies gravity at Red Bull Cape Concrete Cape Town
© Keenan Meyer / Red Bull Content Pool
A puzzle that wasn't meant to be put together
“The gap between having an idea and doing it is pretty massive,” Loubser says. “It's so easy to quickly sketch something up. But when you're moving big pieces of concrete, it's not that easy — and putting them in the correct places to ride them is also hard.”
Then he lands on the image that defines the whole thing. “It's kind of like building a puzzle that wasn't meant to be put together,” he says. “But in the same breath, it's meant to be put together — which is kind of a crazy thought.”
That paradox ran through every day on site. An idea would surface; the team would weigh whether it was worth doing; then the slow, heavy work of forklifts and cranes would begin. Loubser credits the crew who turned sketches into rideable reality — “brothers Nick and Jabsi Louw really held it down at the Cape Concrete factory,” he says.
“It's one thing to think of something, but to move the pieces takes a lot longer than you'd think,” he says. “And to actually perform the trick is always harder than it looks. It's easy to visualise a trick, then you start trying it and it's way harder. But that's the fun of it. A lot of this project was just puzzling it out.”
Out the gate, off the edge
If the building was a puzzle, some of the riding was an act of faith. Take the gantry-crane drop-in — casual from below, anything but from the top.
Murray Loubser pushes limits at Red Bull Cape Concrete in Cape Town
© Keenan Meyer / Red Bull Content Pool
“It looks kind of chilled, but when you're up there you've got one foot on the pedal and you've got to push yourself over the edge,” Loubser says. “As soon as your foot's on the pedal, you're off the first drop. You land on a really small landing, then you're off that onto the next drop.”
No run-up. No approach speed. Just a standstill, an edge, and blind commitment to the next landing — the next “lily pad.” What made it possible was the man dropping in beside him: he and Ntavoutian ran a countdown, with George going first. “He never missed a beat,” Loubser says. “Once we hit zero, he'd go.”
Same story with the Open Loop, the full-pipe slingshot Ntavoutian spent days building. Testing it meant trusting it. “There's no other way except going for it,” says Loubser. “But fortunately, physics works. Steer correctly with enough speed and the G-force keeps you all the way around — it slings out like a slingshot. You've got to trust the process.”
Good energy feeds good energy
The Murray–George dynamic is the engine of the project. “Having George there was so much fun,” Loubser says. “He's got such a cool eye and way of riding a bike. He'll do massive things and isn't scared, so having him there pushed my riding for sure. Good energy feeds good energy.”
The two have ridden together all over the world, which is why a factory at the bottom of Africa still felt familiar. “It kind of just felt like another session with each other, having a good time — but in a really unique situation,” he says. “You don't often get to move bits of concrete around like that.”
Murray Loubser performs at Red Bull Cape Concrete Social First Project
© Keenan Meyer / Red Bull Content Pool
The one he'd always wanted
The truck is the moment that captures the whole spirit. Loubser had never jumped onto a moving vehicle. He clocked the yard's flatbeds on day one and did the only logical thing: asked for the keys.
“We set up a little kicker next to the truck. Nick drove the truck towards me, I pedalled head-on, and the timing was the hardest part,” he says. He hit the kicker, landed on the moving bed and manualled along it — and that's when the physics turned strange. As the truck pulled away beneath him, his speed leapt from around 20km/h to maybe 35 or 40.
“I picked up speed because the truck's moving the opposite direction. It got squirrely on the back wheel, but I managed to hold it and switch off the truck — and landed going slower than I originally hopped on, because the truck slowed me down. It was a pretty crazy feeling. I've always wanted to do that one.”
Things that weren't meant to be ridden
Strip away the cranes and trucks and you're left with what has always driven Loubser: riding what was never built to be ridden.
Murray Loubser and George Ntavoutian at Red Bull Cape Concrete 2026
© Keenan Meyer / Red Bull Content Pool
“You can just go ride skate parks,” he says, “but the funnest part of BMX is riding things that weren't meant to be ridden — architecture. You explore a city, you see new things, you find lines. The Cape Concrete grounds were just loaded with spots.” That's why he's never bored. “BMX has so many options. It constantly stimulates your brain. You never reach the end of the progression — that's what makes it so addicting.”
A factory full of concrete, it turns out, is just a very large set of options. Loubser saw them all in the first half hour. Cape Concrete is what happened when someone handed him the keys — and the crane.
