Swedish mountain biker Alma Wiggberg, 23, maneuvers her bike up some winding stairs and onto a roof of a building in Groningen in the Netherlands. The roar of 20,000 spectators rises from the Dutch market square 50 feet below her.
Her mind blank, she does a final exhale, a head shake, then she pedals to the edge and drops into the competition course.
This run landed the young rider the first-ever women’s title at Red Bull District Ride, one of the most prestigious competitions in slopestyle mountain biking. Women’s inclusion in this event is seen as a marker of progress, offering equal prize money and equal audience to a women’s division that didn’t exist just four years ago.
For one weekend in July, slopestyle mountain biking’s biggest stage took over Groningen’s Grote Markt, a centuries-old Dutch market square.
The usual market stalls and café tables were replaced with a wooden course of ramps, jumps, and wallrides built from scaffolding that towered high beside historic buildings that line the square. Riders flipped and spun across a backdrop of the distinct Martinitoren, a 500-year-old bell tower.
