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Fabio Wibmer<br />
FLIPPING THE SCRIPT<br />
Wibmer is in complete harmony<br />
with his environment in this<br />
mountainous playground<br />
Overlooked by Patscherkofel<br />
mountain on a bright<br />
day in rural Tyrol, just a<br />
few kilometres from his<br />
Innsbruck home, Fabio<br />
Wibmer is about to start<br />
riding. And when the<br />
Austrian pro gets on his<br />
bike, the world watches. Most recently,<br />
the downhill and trials bike rider wowed<br />
millions online with his video Home Office,<br />
made in response to lockdown. In the<br />
film, he transforms his house in ways that<br />
few would imagine possible – jumping<br />
off his roof on his bike onto a mattress<br />
perched in a tree, netting a basketball<br />
with his back wheel, and binning a bag<br />
of rubbish using a homemade catapult.<br />
Wibmer’s tricks have a sense of humour.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y’re also insanely difficult to pull off.<br />
<strong>The</strong>se sorts of unique moves are<br />
exactly what the 25-year-old has<br />
been training for almost all of his life.<br />
Wibmer, it would seem, has a more vivid<br />
imagination than most of us. And it<br />
makes the world his playground.<br />
“I look at the absolutely normal things<br />
around me from a different perspective,”<br />
the Austrian says. “I think of using them<br />
in ways that could be a good idea. And<br />
then I put those ideas into practice.”<br />
Wibmer makes it sound so simple, and<br />
for him, in some ways, it is. “You don’t<br />
need a budget or a chic location to make<br />
the most of your creativity,” he says.<br />
“Sometimes you even have better ideas<br />
when your opportunities are limited.”<br />
Simple, maybe. But not easy.<br />
<strong>The</strong> rider grew up in a mountain<br />
village in East Tyrol – not the greatest<br />
springboard to worldwide fame.<br />
“I love Oberpeischlach,” he says, “but<br />
there was absolutely nothing to do<br />
there. We didn’t as much as a piece of<br />
even ground. You could play football<br />
for five minutes and then the ball would<br />
roll off downhill.”<br />
Wibmer was six when he realised<br />
something important: a meadow and<br />
a fallen tree can actually offer hours of<br />
fun if you think creatively – and get<br />
yourself the right tools. A meadow can<br />
be a moto cross route, and a fallen tree<br />
can be part of a trial obstacle course.<br />
70 THE RED BULLETIN
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