INTERNATIONAL ADVENTURE
LASTING LEGACIES
Hans Rey learns from new hotshots and old legends to work out his place in mountain biking’s legacy.
WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY CARMEN FREEMAN-REY
Looking back on life can be a funny thing, thankfully we have a knack for forgetting the bad and our recollections are sometimes viewed through rose-tinted spectacles. Sometimes we had a solid plan, sometimes we winged it.
Talking to Hans Rey, it becomes apparent that his longspanning career was never just down to luck, there was plenty of forethought – mostly he had a plan, but sometimes he had to wing it too. An example was when he embarked on the most challenging adventure of his life. Hans had turned 50 in 2016 and in terms of being a professional mountain bike rider he was getting on.
Coincidentally, that year they were finally allowing bikes beyond the gates of Kilimanjaro park. Hans’ opinion was, and is, that Kilimanjaro is the mountain biker’s Everest, the highest ridable mountain in the world. The change in rules made an ambitious dream possible for Hans and fellow rider, Gerhard Czerner, to mark this quinquagenarian milestone by taking on Africa’s two greatest behemoths, Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro, back-to-back. What he was proposing was even more remarkable considering his age.
Months earlier Hans invited Danny MacAskill to come along as well. “This trip will be epic and fun,” he said. Danny accepted. Safe to say, this extreme adventure was beyond anything they imagined, not just the sheer physicality of it, or the test of mental stamina, but also the reality that no amount of planning can cover every possibility. The mission was ultimately a success, but disaster was close. (See issue 112 of Singletrack for the full story.)
I wondered, was this the highlight of his career? “No, it’s not, but it’s definitely my greatest adventure,” Hans explained. “It would be impossible to choose the number one highlight when there have been so many over the years.”
Welcoming the next generation
Hans is 20 years older than Danny, and back in 2016 Danny was the hottest thing in mountain biking. You could be forgiven for wondering what possessed Danny to put himself through such a punishing ordeal with some old dude who just might have lost the plot. For Hans, he had always wanted to do it and he was happy to prove that the old dog still had a few new tricks. They were both embracers of challenge and the two between them could claim quite a few ‘firsts’… there is more to it though.
Despite the two decades that separated their birth, the two were good friends, having already shared adventures and more than a few wee drams. As a kid Danny was a fan, with Hans’ poster stuck to his bedroom wall, and Hans had admired Danny ever since watching his first YouTube video. He considered him to be his successor and saw parallels between them.