Crazy! This young Austrian is the most cheeky cyclist in the world – sport

What it does is not in any bus catalog. Who comes up with the idea of ​​jumping out of a flying helicopter, onto the roof of a house or onto an eight meter high ladder? What 25-year-old Tyrolean Fabio Wibmer does with his trial bike is absurd and dizzying, but also imaginative and spectacular.

More Youtube followers than the Italian soccer league

Wibmer will never win an Olympic medal. Even so, it has millions of fans around the world. His videos generally hit the million mark within hours of being posted. 5.65 million subscribers to his YouTube channel. This places it 26th globally in the sports category, ahead of the Italian Serie A soccer league and just behind Real Madrid.

Home office with Fabio Wibmer, could you do that too?

The numbers don’t just mean high visibility for your many backers. But also effective. According to the YouTubers.me platform, which calculates revenue based on subscribers and views, Wibmer has earned € 36,000 in the last 30 days. You don’t need much more than talent, ideas, and a camera. But hardly anyone exhausts the possibilities of social media like Wibmer. It doesn’t even have its own website.

1500 euros for the first bike

Where Wibmer grows, there is little more than meadows and forests. Oberpeischlach, 1060 meters above sea level, 103 inhabitants, in East Tyrol. The perfect playground. Except for football. Because the ball always rolls downhill. When he was six years old, Wibmer begs his father for a motocross bike. From now on, uncle’s field is no longer a bad soccer field, but the perfect race track.

When he saw a self-made video by Scotsman Danny MacAskill in 2009, he began saving for a bike that wasn’t the same as junk when he jumped a self-made hill. Soon you will have the 1500 euros together.

Yeah the cool boy did military service

Right now, Wibmer doesn’t even dream of making a euro by bike. He says:

However, it is enough for the Abitur. To earn some money, he works as an elevator operator at Kals am Grossglockner. And after six months in the military, he enrolls in college for sports management.

Out of the mountain town, into the city. Wibmer is not lost in Innsbruck. On the contrary. “It was great and exciting,” he says today. “Because suddenly he had a whole city to play with.” And he meets people who share his passion, who, like him, imitate the tricks of the MacAskill videos. In 2013, the Scotsman hired him as a show host. From now on there is hardly any time to study.

Now he has his own company that produces his videos.

A year later, the surprise factor follows. «I shot my first slightly bigger video in two weeks. MacAskill shared it on Facebook and got 50,000 views in one day. Totally rude. That was really disturbing. “It is the moment when he realizes the enormous potential of what he likes to do the most. It is the moment when everything else takes a back seat. It is the birth time of influencer Fabio Wibmer.

He has long surpassed mentor MacAskill. Today, Wibmer has its own video production company “Sick Cinema” and a clothing line “Sick Series”. Sick, so sick. This is the first thing his fans think of when they marvel at his tricks. One wonders: How can it be that it is still in one piece? “If you start doing it as a child, you learn to fall, you develop the necessary reflexes,” says Wibmer. “Other than a broken collarbone that I suffered while filming ‘Fabiolous Escape 2’ while jumping out of the helicopter, I was not seriously injured.” By the way: so that fans don’t think of imitating everything that seems so easy and casual, he usually publishes a making-of with setbacks and falls. After all, what Wibmer serves online isn’t a daily fee.

During this jump, Wibmer breaks his clavicle:

It may happen that Wibmer classifies a trick as too risky. In Lyon he wanted to jump from a ladder over the railing to a wall about thirty feet high. A little crazy, he thinks. For six hours he searched for a path before realizing: No, that doesn’t make any sense. “But I will return to this place.”

550 tries until the cheat works

Tenacity is probably a key success factor. When he was turning “home office” during the lockdown, he wanted to maneuver a ball into the basketball hoop with his back wheel. “It was a brutal test of patience. For the crew as well, ”says Wibmer. “I tried and I tried. For a day, without success. The next day again. Because I knew it would work at some point. ”The ball was on the 550 shot.

Bankruptcies, bad luck and setbacks, even that in Fabio Wibmer

But: how legal are video recordings? Because he prefers highly frequented places like the Montmartre stairs. Wibmer laughs and says: “In Paris we did freestyle. Usually we get a filming permit. But that was a spontaneous project. There was no time for paperwork. But what we pay attention to in any case: That the work is insured and that no spectator can stand in my way. I am amazed that he has never received a ticket before. Sure, the police will come and ask what we’re doing. But there have never been any real problems. “

He just wants to play

But there was a bit of stress after he shot a video in Israel. He was accused of political propaganda. “Shit,” says Wibmer. «I do not promote political values ​​nor do I ride a bicycle with flag in hand. I am cosmopolitan. I just like to turn different parts of the world into my playground. Therefore: I would do it again. I do not choose locations based on political or social aspects. I go where I like. “

Yes, Fabio Wibmer just wants to play and live his dream. “Travel the world with the people I like to hang out with.” But every now and then he checks how many people have seen one of his videos. Not every morning. “I have relaxed,” he says. But it has to be two or three times a week. Because these clicks are the currency of the present. Few understood this before Wibmer.

Want more spectacular photos from Wibmer? We’ve got them: