Gee Atherton takes on 400 mountain bikers in new-fangled fox hunt turned topsy-turvy

Over the past several years, Red Bull has been sponsoring a very different kind of fox hunt, wherein world-champion racing cyclist Gee Atherton (the “fox”) attempts to outrace a pack of 400 mountain bikers.

In 2016, starting at the very back of the pack, Atherton managed to outrace all but one of the 400 “hounds” as they took on the 3.5 mile downhill trail on Rostrevor Mountain in Ireland.

Atherton’s first-person point-of-view video illustrates just how nimbly he navigated around the dozens of bikers that clogged the treacherous trail in front — while hitting speeds in excess of 50 km/h.

#RedBullFoxhunt is a wrap and it was wild!! Fastest course by far and some wild over takes! Stoked to make it to 2nd, Sorry to anyone that hit the deck, there were some moves! Amazing weekend from @redbullire good work guys! 📷 @Sebastianmarko

A photo posted by Gee Atherton (@gee_atherton) on Oct 9, 2016 at 9:00am PDT

Later that same year, Gee’s sister Rachel overtook 144 racers on a new course near the Atherton’s hometown in Machynlleth, Wales.

In 2017, after a whirlwind UCI Downhill World Champion win, Loïc Bruni took a trip to the emerald isle to try his luck at the madness of Red Bull Foxhunt.

Being accustomed to his typical solo downhill runs, Bruni got quite the shock trying to outrun over 450 hounds as well as the two other foxes in the form of two-time downhill World Champion Atherton and three-time Foxhunt winner Colin Ross.

Last year in October, 550 riders played the part of the hounds as they tried to outride three foxes at Rostrevor’s Mountain Bike Centre. This year’s foxes were Atherton, Bruni and Ireland’s top MTB rider Greg Callaghan.