Redbull Hardline took its first trip out of Wales on the 24th of February, with riders travelling to Tasmania. The course looked ridiculous, with some insane videos shared on socials in the build up to the event. It all looked just as massive as Hardline in Wales, just sunnier and with a lot more dust!
Intense Factory Racing rider Lou Ferguson was on the invite list and headed over with mechanic K C Till.
After some scary times during practice in the week building up to the main event on the Saturday, the riders steadily got the hang of the course, feature by feature.
This was another historic event as there was the potential for there to be the first women in history to complete a full run of the mega intimidating Redbull Hardline course.
Women in attendance were Tahnée Seagrave, Cami Nogueira, Lou Ferguson and Gracey Hemstreet.
With some extremes of weather, practice was made super difficult, there was intense heat, sometimes rain and cold and it was pretty much always windy. This made getting in ample practice really difficult.
Come race day the women's field was whittled down to Gracey Hemstreet and Louise Ferguson. Gracey put down an amazing run in finals and became the first ever women's finisher of Redbull Hardline, an amazing achievement.
Lou was second down the hill, but unfortunately had two huge crashes. Amazingly Lou was able to dust herself down and somehow still nail all the big features down to the finish. An unbelievable achievement by both riders for their place in the history books. Lou is an absolute warrior!
