Getty Image / Sean M. Haffey
Mountain biker Dawid Godziek’s mountain biking resume has no shortage of accolades. He’s a 2x X-Games gold medalist and won the 2024 Red Bull Joyride. Dawid also just became the first person to (1) ride a bike on a moving train, (2) jump between cars, and (3) pull of the world’s first mountain bike backflip on a moving train.
Now that you’re all well acquainted with this prominent figure in downhill mountain biking and BMX Dirt let’s take a look at just how insane this backflip is on the train. In order to pull this off, some serious consideration had to be put into the physics of it all…
For starters, he had to perfectly match his riding speed to that of the train. From the side view it almost seems as if he’s stationary and that’s because if he didn’t match his riding speed to that of the train it would be as if he was going 2x the speed and he would miss every jump. Also, crosswinds had to be taken into account. The train and the mountain biking course are less than 8 feet wide in some parts. With that in mind, let’s check it out…
World’s First Mountain Biking Backflip On Top Of A Moving Train
Given how many insane ‘firsts’ they’ve pulled off over the years or records they’ve helped get broken, Red Bull’s sports division has no shortage of outlandish requests. But I would absolutely love to have been a fly on the wall when someone told an executive at Red Bull they wanted to set up a downhill mountain biking course on top of a moving train and do backflips.
In a second clip posted to Instagram they hone in on the planning and consideration to physics that was involved in pulling off the world’s first moving train mountain bike backflip:
Incredible stuff. Truly.