Every year going into Red Bull Rampage, it’s anyone’s guess who will win. While an athlete may have cooked themselves up a dream run, things go wrong in practice, seamlessly linking parts of the mountain together is always a challenge, and wind is an ever-present element lurking in the background.
If you watched this year’s Rampage, at the end of the first set of runs, you may not have assumed Cam Zink would win, after he stalled out on the lower part of the mountain. In 2018, he pulled out of the event after an injury in practice and in 2019, he finished last after crashing on both runs.
Following a weird dream the morning of finals, Zink, 37, told himself he was going to win. And then, despite the botched first run, he stuck an incredible second with a massive backflip over a step down and earned a score no one else could match.
We caught up with the two time Rampage winner after the desert dust settled and he’d returned to his home in Hawaii to learn about his preparation, the win, his Washed Up video, and his thoughts on retiring.
You’re living in Hawaii now? I thought it may have been just for the recent video. What prompted the move?
My wife hates the cold. We’ve been in Reno for a long time. She just hates winters. We all snowboard as a family, but they don’t enjoy it as much as surfing. And I kind of promised her a long time ago, that we can live in Reno for a while and then we can move anywhere, and she’s holding me to it and ended up liking it, and I don’t really want to leave. We still have our property in Reno, and our house rented, and right now we’re just renting here, but we don’t really want to leave.
How is the riding in Hawaii?
The riding scene on Maui is better than I really anticipated. It’s not a ton of quantity, but there’s some real quality stuff. The original thought was (my wife) wanted to move to Hawaii and I’m like, well of course we’re going to move to Oahu because I know there’s riding there. It’s not the greatest but there’s some, and then come to find Maui is way more prevalent and a better scene.
I guess there’s more [bike] shops per capita and more trails per capita. The Makawoa trail system, there’s like one main flow trail, there’s some other machine-built stuff, but there’s five trails total with a couple of illegal ones and a little skills park and that’s about it. It’s world class for sure. It’s just not massive.
Awesome. Well, Congrats on the Rampage victory. How did you celebrate?
It’s pretty family-ish, you know. We went to Vegas and stayed two nights and just played in the pool with the kids, bought mama some shoes and Prada and things like that. Pretty mellow compared to the old days or even like life without kids, but pretty sweet.
And then I had to drive my truck and trailer and UTV back to Reno. Amanda and the kids flew out and I got to celebrate with some of my friends in Reno for a day or two and then come back here. So now celebration is trying to relax and surf as much as possible.
It’s gotta be hectic going into Rampage, right?
Oh yeah, you never feel like you can do enough. Even down to getting your bikes organized and built and then having contractual obligations to film, building the bike and getting custom wheels and paint jobs and all like the custom helmets and kits. Even that’s quite a bit of logistics, let alone prepping, riding, building, getting your team ready, all the above.
What did you have in mind for Rampage this year going into it?
I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and I actually scaled it back a fair bit. This was a second year build. We built the majority of the line last year–Kyle and I–he’s got a different entrance point from the top, but after the top couple hundred feet of vert, we’re in the same same lines and I knew what the line was going to be, what I hoped to make it, and improve on it, what tricks I wanted to do, and I think I ended up working out really well, because there’s nothing to practice much here.
I have an airbag but it doesn’t have as good of a roll in as I’d like, but I spent more of my time just visualizing. I’d get up every morning before anyone in the house was awake and sit on the back and visualize my run every morning. And even though I ended up altering (my run), it still gets you prepared for when you’re in the gate, and there’s zero shock. You’re more inclined to go into autopilot. And that’s kind of the easy part, right? Like when all the muscle memory takes over. The actual run is usually kind of easy because you kind of black out and let everything happen.
When you say visualize your run is that meditative or what does that look like?
I guess. It’s pretty meditative. I’m closing my eyes and sitting in a relaxed position like you would when you’re when you’re meditating. Just like meditating you’re trying to block out any other thoughts, or any deterrent.
I remember hearing this from a Cirque de Sole performer a long time ago that when you’re visualizing, if there’s a hiccup in it, then that’s what you need to work on. Pretty easy once you hear it, but you wouldn’t really think about it that simply. And I’ve found in the past, there’s been some things that I can’t really visualize, and there’s a hiccup somewhere or I can’t visualize it entirely. And then by the time I need to do it, it clicks. It’s kind of funny, if it works in your head, there’s a very high probability it can work in reality. And I remember hearing that Sam Hill used to be able to do that with his race runs and it would be within a second or two of its actual race run, which is pretty phenomenal.
So you’ve got the visualization going on every morning and then you go into your first run and it looked like you had lost some speed going into one segment from another, but you stalled out on the first run. What changed between runs one and two?
I don’t know, I guess I was trying to have too tight of margins, because that jump before it was a pretty flat landing, so you could actually over clear it and not really lose speed, or normally if you land low on a landing out of a jump, you lose a ton of speed. So I hadn’t came up short and I jumped that jump about six, seven times, maybe more and didn’t mess up once. I knew the speed. I felt great. I was just trying to set up really wide for the next few tricks we had to turn in and needed as much speed as possible.
So I tried to land right at the top of the landing on the far left and I came up about six inches short. And the left side of the landing that was like a foot away from the sandbags was pretty soft. I didn’t even realize it–that fill dirt was under there instead of the bentonite that was on top of the rest of the landing and I sunk in and there’s no way I could have possibly cleared it.
So everyone’s like, “oh, that was a crazy decision. You made the right call.” And I was like there wasn’t any other call at all. There’s no way possible that I could have cleared the jump.
So the second run I kind of switched my mindset from focus on your own race and switched over to more of just a straight competitive mindset. Kind of more angry, instead of relaxed and slightly nervous and even though (the judges) say they don’t, second rounds always end up being a little bit of a higher score.
So it was like, do what you can do, flip your mindset, turn the negative into a positive, and it worked out. I love it when I can resort to my subconscious and I can let things just roll without overthinking.
Like, the morning of finals I woke up from a bad dream with a vivid visualization of me laying on the ground with everyone over me and a pretty vivid crash, and everyone’s like “you’re gonna be alright.” And it was a pretty shitty way to wake up. And I didn’t tell my wife, I didn’t tell anyone, I just flipped it in my head and said, “That’s just everyone tackling me after going through the finish line, because I’m gonna win this thing. And everyone’s gonna talk to me and I’ll be laying on the ground.” And that’s the visualization. It wasn’t me needing oxygen, you know? Yeah, it’s all a big mental game, that’s for sure.
And then you finish your second run and what did you expect for your score? What were you feeling after?
Well, you never know what the judges are gonna like that day, what they’re gonna appreciate, if they’re not seeing something on your line that is super exposed and dangerous or very difficult. But I got a little bit of an inkling from two of the judges earlier in the week, because, there’s no rules against asking them their honest opinion about what if I tried this and they both kind of said, I wouldn’t waste your run on that. They didn’t say your run has the ability to win, but they said you have a potentially winning run and I don’t think it’s going to add to it.
So I knew they were stoked on what I had planned. They knew the measurements, how big everything was and how exposed things are. So I had an idea, but when Brendan came down, I thought we were kind of in trouble, because I didn’t think that run should have scored that high, but I don’t know. But then Tom and Carson came down which is more similar to my line, and I was like sweet, if I land this, there’s a good chance I’m gonna win, but I’ve come through the finish corral numerous times thinking that’s the winning run and the judges have other ideas.
But when I saw Tom and Carson doing a train down because they weren’t going to try and beat (my run), it was too big of a points gap, I was just blown away. It was one of the greatest moments in my life, for sure.
It’s ironic that the Washed Up video came out right before Rampage, and then you clinched the win with your second run. Obviously there is a message behind the video. Tell me about it and the timeliness of the release around Rampage.
It worked out better in the end. I was trying to get it planned and trying to get budget approvals and especially with a massive corporation like Monster, trying to get filmers here, everything lagged for one reason or another and we didn’t start filming until March. We were hoping to have it out mid-summer, but it ended up being serendipitous to be right before Rampage.
But the idea was just to make a cool, fun, short film, kind of 80s style. And something different where I’m not just completely risking my life, but a really cool piece of film. And a lot of fun making it. But I definitely tried to make some jokes about me being washed up and old having having the classic retired guy car, and poking fun at some sponsors and stuff that might think that I’m just taking money and running to Maui, things like that.
Because I know what’s going on in my own head and what my motivations are and what I’m capable of. So it was time to just show and prove that it’s a bit irony.
I think for a lot of athletes who have been competing a while and then get the Super Bowl ring or whatever, it feels like a natural time to retire or to move on, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the case?
No, I’m leaving it open ended. I just still love to do it. I didn’t think that I would still be doing it at 37. I didn’t think I’d want to be doing it at 37 or be capable of it. But I still feel like I’m getting better in a lot of ways. I’m not as tenacious or I guess as big of a risk taker on a daily basis as I was when I was younger, but that’s also just to keep longevity, but I do still feel like I’m getting better in a lot of ways. And I just love it too damn much.
Rampage win or lose, it’s still some of the best times of my life and being on the hill. And some of the most brutal working conditions from sunup to sundown, 12+ hour days with your good friends and the moments I’ll cherish forever win or lose, but then when you add on a win–I mean literally two of the best days of my life are on that mesa, or actually three; when I when I flipped the original Oakley Sender in 2013, my wife was nine months pregnant, I’d just clipped my femoral artery and almost died mountain biking a couple of weeks prior.
I was dealing with a giant pocket of fluid in my hip. It was getting infected, and they wanted to cut me open and wouldn’t let me out of the hospital in the days leading up to it. All of that was at the same 100 by 100 foot area. I got the win in 2010, got the FMB World Title that day as well when it was a series that involved Rampage.
Literally three of the best moments of my life. And I don’t want to give that up. I want to keep going as long as I can. Because I’m never gonna retire and come back. When it’s done, it’s done. It could be tomorrow. It could be 10 years from now, but it could be next year. I don’t know. But I never want to do it for the money. We don’t get paid that much money anyway. But you know, I just love it too much.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
