Robin Goomes: From working at Antarctic army base to doing backflips off cliffs in Utah

Having earned her stripes in Antarctica, former soldier with a love of raw steak is flying high in freeride mountain biking

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Robin Goomes has enjoyed a varied life – and she is not yet 30. She grew up riding dirt bikes on the Chatham Islands, off the coast of New Zealand’s South Island. At 18 she enlisted in the army and became one of the first women to be stationed at New Zealand’s Antarctic research station, Scott Base.
Five years later, she decided to return to two wheels but this time focus on mountain biking. Earlier this year she became the winner of the inaugural Red Bull Rampage women’s event, performing two backflips on the mountain-biking course over red rock cliffs in Utah.
Here Goomes talks to Telegraph Sport about time travel, aliens and inspirations…
I’d say chill, persistent and hopefully fun.
I think teleporting would be pretty sweet – I hate plane travel. I’ve got the best job in the world, but if I didn’t have to fly, I’d be stoked.
Oh, only for one day. I’ve got a pretty good life, I don’t know if I’d really want to switch, but one day… You know what, I’d switch with an alien.
There’s probably too many to count. Normally I just black these out from my mind.
It was probably just going to a lake at Christmas time and camping with my family. We used to do it every single Christmas and it was pretty good.
When I was in Antarctica, maybe. In Antarctica, there’s a New Zealand flag at the base and, at the end of every summer and winter season, they gift it to someone who has been an outstanding worker at the base. So I actually have a New Zealand flag that came from Scott Base in Antarctica. I’ve lived a life – so many crazy lives.
It is hard to pick one, I feel like there are some goodies. Obviously I was inspired by David Goggins [former US Navy SEAL turned ultramarathon runner], so I’d say both of his books, Can’t Hurt Me and Never Finished, probably inspired and had some impact. I don’t watch a whole lot of TV.
My Barbie bike [her custom bike in Barbie colours for the Rampage]. I really love that bike and I want to keep riding it, but at the same time it’s just sick how it is and I almost want to never ride it again and just put it somewhere nice.
Probably something Martha [Gill, another mountain biker] puts on. She just knows what’s good and she’ll get me bopping.
The first person that comes to mind is David Goggins.
I love a good steak tartare. That’ll be our starter. And then, how much steak would be too much? Because the mains would probably be some sort of gourmet wagyu eye fillet.
And then dessert. That’s a hard one. I love dessert so much. You know, I do like a good old chocolate mousse, or a tiramisu is pretty good. Perhaps an assortment of fine desserts – the more chocolate the better, basically.
Oh, the guests… Can we have Tupac [Shakur], Jesus and an alien?
Control the controllables and trust your instincts. I feel like that applies to a lot of the stuff I do where you can only control what you can control and then at some point you just have to trust it.
When I was 18 I went to an Eminem concert and it was pretty unreal.
Oh, I love this question. It’s so hard – both of them would be freaking wild. Personally, I like the idea of going back in time. Is it a one-way trip? If it’s one-way, back for sure. If you could only go backwards and continue going backwards forever, then I would go all the way back and see dinosaurs and things. If you could stop, I’d make a quick pit stop through historic times, like see the Romans, carry on backwards, see the dinosaurs, maybe the ice age, kick out at the big bang. Or Jesus’s birth, who knows? It’d be fun though.
If I could dip forward, have a look and come back, then that’d be sick too. For me, the future’s a little concerning with global warming and AI and all this crazy s—. I don’t know what it looks like. It’d be cool to see, but I don’t want to stay there yet.
Since mountain biking, I don’t even take holidays any more.
I’ve never been to karaoke. I have to put it on the bucket list.
I’m not that much of a consumption-crazy spender.
I’m pretty talentless.
I’d probably still be in the army or the air force, something on that career path. In the army I thought about changing to the air force because I wanted to fly helicopters, but became a sportsperson instead.
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