Right now, somewhere in High Desert, California, there sits a long straight section of jumps that ends with an obstacle we've never seen in FMX—a spine ramp. It's all thanks to the fact that FMX and motocross rider, Colby Raha, teamed up with Claybourne to make this a reality.
Raha has nine X-Games medals, with six of them being gold. But before he took the world of FMX by storm, he rode BMX bikes, and it's clear that Raha's background in BMX still influences the way he rides a FMX bike.
And now it could influence the future of the sport itself.
Building the Ramp
In 2020, Raha became the first person to grind a rail on a full-sized motorcycle, and in 2024, he was the first person to jump a man-made spine ramp.
It was a concept that'd been in Raha's mind for a few years, and the design was fairly simple: build a 20-foot high, 30-foot wide spine ramp using A-frames constructed by telephone poles. Although the design is simple, the build was something foreign in the world of FMX, meaning it wasn't guaranteed to work.
With the help of Claybourne, it took Raha and a group of buddies the best part of a week to construct the ramp, which needed a kicker at the top to give a dirt bike a fighting chance of making it over. Raha's background in construction and expertise in ramp building ensured the team created something that looked like it could work.
Did It Work?
As with any good two-part series, the first episode leaves us on a cliffhanger. Raha hits the ramp for the first time, and things don't look good. To find out whether the spine ramp was an overall success, check out the second episode below.
Raha Ramps
Raha does some absolutely insane urban FMX tricks and has a YouTube channel dedicated to it. I'm not advising that you follow in Raha's footsteps and jump over speeding trains, but you can buy the same ramps he uses in his videos at Raha Ramps and do with them as you please on private property.
Unfortunately, there's no sign of a production spine ramp for sale. Yet. But let us know in the comments if spine ramps are a feature you'd like to see moving forward in FMX.
