Hans Rey: a lifetime balancing act

It’s Sunday afternoon, and we’re on the craggy summit of Mt Buller. Following a day of racing and trail riding as part of the Bike Buller Festival, the sun is slowly beginning its return journey back to the horizon. Tripods are holding up enormous flashes, and emptied camera bags are strewn across the scrubby alpine bushes surrounding us. A few meters away from the camera lens, Hans Rey is straddling a leg over his new GT Sensor trail bike, which is appropriately painted green and gold for his trip Down Under.

“Maybe I can do a nose wheelie down the rock slab over zer?” asks Hans as he points towards the staircase that leads down from the summit.

“Yeah, erm, well…if you can do that, that would look really cool” I respond back to him. At the same time, I’m wondering in my head; ’he can actually do that?’

I then promptly answer my own question. Well yes, he can do that. He is Hans Rey after all – what can’t he do?

I’m sure Hans has done thousands of photo shoots like this before. I know because I’ve been watching him assess the lighting and the landscape around him. Ever the consummate professional, Hans is looking for the right angle, the right rock to ride over, the right position to set himself up for the right shot. Having landed over 300 magazine cover shots over his 30-year career, he knows what the photographers are looking for. And he doesn’t mess about either. There’s no faffing with gloves or realising he’s wearing a stained riding jersey. This is Hans’ job, and he is always ready for that next cover shot.

GOOD TIMES DOWN UNDER

Hans is currently on tour with GT Bicycles, his main sponsor for the past 30 years. Stopping over from country to country, Hans is meeting with distributors, dealers, customers and fans in a brand-building exercise that comes very naturally for the German-born Californian. As part of the tour, Hans is spending a few days at the Bike Buller Festival.

It’s the first time that Hans has been back in Australia since the 1990’s. His first visit was in 1992, where he won the National Trials Championship in Thredbo as an invitational guest.

“I was invited by Graham Southcott, who was the GT distributor at the time, to come to the competitions in Thredbo”, explained Hans in his still thick German accent. “We also planned a promotion and media tour around it. The first day I had an appearance on the Steve Vizard TV Show, and this opened the tours to every morning, talk and sports show in Australia. It was a busy week and my trials skills made me a popular guest on tele.”

Some 20 years later though, and things have changed somewhat. I ask Hans what he knows about the riding scene here and what he was expecting from his trip.

“I’ve heard and witnessed a lot about the mountain biking scene down under. It’s the real thing and it has roots, deeper than many recognise”, Hans tells me. He goes on to talk about the World Cup-level talent that has come out of Australia, from the early days of Scott Sharples and Mick Ronning, through to today’s Brosnan’s and Frew’s.

“And the scene in Cairns too” he continues. “The Minjins, Glen Jacobs and the Mud Cow Videos, you know, they are a really important milestone in the history of Freeride, even before the word was coined or adapted to mountain bikes, and even before Freeride got going in Canada or the USA”. Not long into our discussion, I soon realise that Hans likely knows more about the history of mountain biking in Australia than most local riders do.

Because of Hans’ involvement with the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA), he’s also been well aware of the growing buzz surrounding new trail developments in Australia such as the Epic trail at Mt Buller and Blue Derby in Tasmania.

“I hear about Mount Buller quite a lot over the years, especially through Glen Jacobs trail projects and all the feedback from people who rode them”, says Hans. Consequently, he leapt at the opportunity to experience those trails first hand.

And so here we are sitting on top of the Victorian High Country doing wheelies and taking photos. I still have bigger questions on my mind. How exactly did Hans end up here?

NO WAY REY!

Hans originally grew up in Germany, where he discovered an early passion for motorbike trials. His parents wouldn’t let him rip around on a motorbike though. “My buddy and I were maybe too young, and our parents thought maybe it was too dangerous, or too expensive”, explains Hans. So in the early 80’s, Hans and his friends started converting their BMX bikes so they could ride trials.

“We started converting BMX bikes into trials bikes, putting on smaller chainrings and 3-speed hubs, eventually drum brakes too”, Hans told me. “We made the bars wider, first with pieces of wood that we carved, and then later it got a bit more sophisticated!”

It wasn’t long before Hans and his trials buddies were performing live shows and riding in competitions. Hans quickly rose to the top of the sport, and he became a regular performer for bigger and bigger audiences.

“There was actually a really big TV show in Germany, way back in the day, waaay before Internet when there was only three TV channels in Germany”, says Hans as he recalls his live trials performance. “This TV show had 41 million viewers live. I mean, this number was big, the Oscars don’t even get these numbers these days”.

In 1987, Hans was convinced by an American trials rider to travel over to California and show them what real trials riding looked like. At the age of 20, Hans flew over to California to spend a summer competing and riding his bike. Within that first year of competition, Hans was already sponsored and competing at a national level. He didn’t book a return flight back to Germany.

There has been much written and documented about Hans’ accomplishments competing at trials, as a multiple Trials National and World Champion, Hans Rey is well and truly cut the mustard at the highest level of the sport. Competitive sport would only form one part of his very long and very successful career on two wheels.

THE ART OF EXTREME MOUNTAIN BIKING

For Hans, he always wanted to use his skills outside of trials competition. He loved showing people the things he could do on a bike, and so in the 90s Hans started filming his own riding videos. Rather than the racing videos at the time, Hans’s videos pioneered what he called “Extreme Mountain Biking”, where he would ride in locations that people never conceived a bike could go. Bungy jumping, flipping into pools, and bunny hopping across cars on a freeway were all part of Hans’ repertoire, especially if it was performed around or on a famous landmark. The more extreme and ‘out there’ the stunts, the better.

Hans’ film career progressively went from strength to strength. He became well known as a stunt rider for various TV shows and movies, even playing himself in the TV series “Pacific Blue”. In 1990, Hans worked as both the stunt coordinator and as a stunt rider in “Fire, Ice & Dynamite”, which was a huge action sports comedy with a budget of $20 million, starring Roger Moore as the lead actor.

But Hans’ favourite video project? Working with Mr Jiggs in “Monkey See, Monkey Do”, where Hans taught the chimpanzee how to ride a bike – an absolute classic video for any Hans Rey fan out there. “Mr Jiggs, that’s like one of my highlights of my career”, recalls Hans. ”Funny thing, he was actually a she, and her claim to fame at the time was that she beat Bill Cosby as Entertainer of the Year in America”.

Hans also made a name for himself travelling the world and taking his bike to far-reaching locations that were regarded as unrideable. One of Hans’ early trips was to Machu Pichu in Peru to ride the Inca Trail. “Some parts were perfect for mountain biking, and other parts…were less so”, Hans explains. “We rode it all on a hardtail, which was pretty brutal back then”.

He’s ridden through the Himalayas, across the highlands of Guatemala, and along an abandoned railway through Argentina. He’s ridden with the likes of Steve Peat, Brian Lopes, Danny Macaskill and Richie Schley, and he even worked with Glen Jacobs on the ‘No Way Trans Alp’ trip, where Jacobs was a member of the film crew.

“I like to explore new places, ride on trails that haven’t been ridden before, at least not by me”, explains Hans, who has visited over 70 different countries in his lifetime.

Out of all the adventures Hans has been on, what has been his favourite?

“It is hard to pick one or even a few, every trip stands out for something”, admits Hans. “Some of my all time favourites have been my first ascent and descent from Mount Kenya, also a traverse from Tilcara North Argentina, a ride across the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, Transalp, and lately more and more riding trail centres and purpose built trails too.”

What began as a keen interest in travelling and seeing new parts of the world has progressively turned into a viable career for Hans. While he hasn’t competed at trials riding for years, he has arguably become a more important asset to his long-standing sponsors such as GT and Adidas thanks to his travelling adventures and the videos, photos and stories that come along with them. And from the sounds of it, there’ll be plenty more of that to come too.

“As more place I go to, the more I realise that I might have seen more than most, but I have only scratched the surface”, says Rey. “Bikes are a great travel companion and great tool to explore the world.”

WHEELS 4 LIFE

Hans’ motivation for riding his bike in exotic far-reaching locations is more than just about the riding. “I like to experience different cultures, meet the locals, learn their history and their cuisine”, says Hans.

He also enjoys visiting developing countries and seeing how bikes are used by local communities and what they mean to the people there. “From simple daily water collection chores, to seeing people carry 140kg of mango, five sacks of charcoal, up to four persons, and I’ve even seen a complete chassis of a VW Golf transported on top of a bicycle!” explains Hans.

While Hans has seen some incredible feats carried out on two wheels, many of the people in these communities are just as flabbergasted when they see him and his film crew attempt to ride their bikes where they do.

“Often, sometimes they look at you like kind of ‘what are you doing?’ and ‘why are you trying to ride that mountain that we’re all trying to avoid?’ and often you almost feel ashamed to tell them how much your bike is worth” says Hans. “But the bike is such a universal thing you know? You start doing some tricks, and all of a sudden, everyone starts smiling and coming out of their huts, and it really opens up the conversation, and it’s a very nice thing”.

Having recognised just how much the sport of mountain biking has provided Hans over the years, he decided that he wanted to give something back to people who really needed it. In 2005, Hans founded Wheels 4 Life with his partner Carmen Rey as an entirely not-for-profit organisation that supplies bikes to communities in disaster-ridden and war-torn places. To date, Hans & Carmen have supplied over 8400 bikes all around the globe. Because they are all small-scale projects, they know each person that every bike has gone to.

“Lives have been saved and education has been made possible”, says Hans of his Wheels 4 Life charity. “The bike is often the only tool or chance people have to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty”.

RIDING TO LIVE, LIVING TO RIDE

While many athletes have struggled to find their feet in life after racing, Hans’ hard work and his thirst for adventure have forged himself one of the most highly successful post-competition careers in the sport of mountain biking.

“Do you have all the photos that you need?” asks Hans politely at the end of our shoot. “That’s a wrap mate, we’re good!” I answer back. And as we’re packing up the camera gear to load into the truck, Hans decides to skip the lift back and ride his bike on the trails all the way down into the village. Because he can, and because at the end of the day, he still loves riding his bike after all these years.

To donate to Hans & Carmen Rey’s charity, head to wheels4life.org