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Growing up in the remote Chatham Islands, about 800km off the coast of New Zealand, Robin Goomes had a unique upbringing. She would often tag along with her mum, a Department of Conservation ranger, helping with pest control, feeding burrowing birds and planting trees around the island.
“I was a mum’s girl for sure,” says Goomes. “I always looked up to her, but she was different from your average mum. She was very hands-on, and taught me how to weld and how to shoot.” After learning how to hunt possums, Goomes began making money by plucking possum furs and selling them to the mainland.
“That’s how I paid for my first dirt bike, when I was 10.”
The unusual childhood put Goomes on a path towards becoming one of the top freeride mountain bikers in the world, including the first woman to land a backflip in competition.
During her childhood, the Chathams had a population of 600 full-time residents, spread across three islands on small farms and settlements. The largest town had a corner store, fish and chip shop, and a pub. “Just enough of the things you need and nothing more really. It was a great place to grow up,” says 28-year-old Goomes. “Everyone was family. You could do anything you wanted. It was free.”
In high school Goomes moved to Christchurch, but didn’t like it initially. “It was a big change, going from the middle of nowhere to city life. I had so much less freedom. On the Chathams I learned to drive when I was 11 and would borrow my mum’s car to set up possum traps. On the mainland I couldn’t even ride a dirt bike up the street.”
Living a few blocks from a BMX track, Goomes found a new outlet, replacing motorcycles with a BMX. Despite a late start in the sport, she competed in both the South and North Island titles and won New Zealand Nationals, a nod towards what was to come.
After graduating, Goomes spent a year working in a motorcycle shop, then joined the army. Unsure of what she wanted to do in life – and knowing university wasn’t for her – she enrolled and worked as a machine operator. She split time between bases on the North Island, eventually landing a summer assignment on Scott Base in Antarctica.
“It was the coolest thing I had ever done,” says Goomes. “There were about 30 staff at the base working six days a week. On our days off we would go to a ski field with a rope tow, or take field trips to old, historic huts from explorers, or ride fat bikes on marked routes, so we didn’t fall into crevasses.”
Back on the South Island, a friend introduced her to mountain biking, which she fell in love with quickly. “It was a cool mixture between BMX and motorbikes. I was so bad at first, but really enjoyed it.”
Goomes progressed quickly, learning brake control and how to handle technical sections with roots and steep descents. Later the same summer she entered a local enduro race – a mix of technical downhill sections and endurance-based cross country – and won. “I was wearing a half shell helmet, running shorts, and vans, I looked like such a squid [slang for a new rider without common sense]” says Goomes. In 2021, she left the army to pursue riding full time.
The timing was perfect, as women’s freeride was about to explode. Freeride is a relatively new discipline that combines elements from downhill, dirt jumping, and BMX biking. Riders are scored by judges on tricks, style and composure on technical features, instead of racing for time.
Goomes was invited to Crankworx in Innsbruck, Austria, and surprised everyone by landing the first competition backflip by a woman. That led to an invite to Audi Nines, one of the biggest events of the year, making her one of the first women to compete in the event. After the event she was named the rider of the week, accelerating her rapid accession to the top of the sport.
“A lot of my career has been: right place, right time,” says Goomes. “Other ladies like Casey Brown put in the work and pushed the door open, and I was lucky to follow them.” True or not, Goomes was also one of the first women to ride in Darkfest, a six-day event in South Africa with some of the biggest jumps in the world, helping solidify her reputation as a trailblazer in the industry.
‘Willing for everything to go wrong’
In October 2024, Goomes was one of eight women invited to Rampage, mountain biking’s biggest event. Located in Virgin, Utah, Rampage has been run since 2001, but until 2024 was open only to men. After years of public pressure, women were finally invited, a watershed moment in the mountain bike world.
“There is nothing like it,” says Goomes. “I wanted to ride in Rampage for a long time. You go with a small team of diggers and spend a week building your own line, then go as big on the jumps as you want,” describing the nearly infinite possibilities of the event’s backdrop, Gooseberry Mesa.
Riders bring a support team to help design and build an individualised descent down the steep sandstone cliffs, which allows for a lot of creativity – and even more problem solving. With limited time, athletes also have to figure out the right speed to hit each of their jumps, without getting to watch others try them first.
Widely considered the toughest freeride competition in the world, Rampage is famous for steep and rocky terrain, which is challenging even for the best in the world. With a forecast of high winds for the day of the competition, Goomes woke up before dawn, hoping to find an early moment of calm. Instead, she waited on the top of the sandstone mesa for hours.
“When it finally calmed down, I did a practice run, which was my first time linking the full line top to bottom. I fucked up every feature, casing [misjudging] the big jump and nearly died.”
Learning from her mistakes, Goomes dropped into her first competition run, navigating the craggy slopes and landing two backflips and the 40ft drop. “I’ve never been in that headspace,” said Goomes. “We spent days leading up to that drop, putting in all that time and effort. But in the moment, it felt like nothing mattered. I was willing for everything to go wrong.”
With a score of 85 points, Goomes wowed the judges and won the competition, walking away with a large portion of the $100,000 prize pool. More importantly, she unofficially yet firmly shattered the last gender barrier at the highest level of mountain biking, putting women at the very sharpest end of the sport.
In her calm demeanour, Goomes described Rampage as emblematic of her entire career.
“There was so much unknown. I put the work in, but didn’t expect it to happen. I’m just trying to do everything I’ve set out to do and really accept what happens in the moment.”
