Cam Zink: I do, but with the way this goes we really don’t get a full off–season. I get anxious and I need to get on my bike. I convince myself it’s been six weeks and then I realise it’s only been three. After I broke my leg I was riding moto a month later, right after having a rod put in it. I rode a week after surgery with Compartment Syndrome in my leg while it was swollen as shit, filming for a BFG tyres edit. All four compartments of my calf fascia slipped open. It’s like arm pump surgery, but for your leg. I got it because I rode too shortly after surgery. Then while filming it got infected. I try to listen to the doctors, but when I feel good is when I ride. That is something I have a hard time with. After Crankworx I got knocked out and I knew I couldn’t mess with it for at least three days. I felt good, and wanted to ride, but it was just bad, my girl was cryin’ and shit, and deep down I knew I had to sit it out. That was a tough pill to swallow. I’ve learned the hard way. One of the times that I was riding with a torn ACL I was going to come up short and could’ve bailed and slid down fine, but I didn’t wanna land on my legs so I hung up hard and nose wheelied to the bottom and ruptured my spleen because I was trying to save my legs. Live and learn I guess.

Cam Zink: That’s just what I do. It’s what makes me feel full as a person. I’ve come to realise that if I’m not out on my bike pushing the limits and living up to my potential, I don’t feel good about myself. Bike riding isn’t everything to me, but when I feel good on a bike everything else in life feels better. It’s my pride and joy, it’s what I put everything into and it’s what I’m best at. If I’m not riding well I just don’t feel good. There have been times when I’m not exactly depressed but I’m just bummed and it’s because I’m not feeling solid. Then all of a sudden I will go out, push it and do some things I’m proud of on the bike that makes me feel better about myself and I feel complete again.

Cam Zink: In a sense, yeah. Especially when it comes down to Rampage. It’s the biggest event in mountain biking, so winning that gives me the biggest sense of accomplishment, it’s a huge deal to me. You only get one every couple years. In 2012 I was going to win. I had it in my head. What I was going to do… no one is willing to go that extra mile and beat me. No one else would do what I had planned to do. I had already hit that jump twice. Bad luck, but I put a new rear shock on, had the sun in my eyes and… and all this other stuff had piled up and led to that. The next day I knew what I had done wrong and I said to myself ‘it’s going to be better today. I’m going to backflip/no hander that f–king jump and I’m gonna win this shit’. Sadly I couldn’t even keep my cranks straight off of a little ten foot drop. I did a couple test drops, and I couldn’t hold myself up. I tried to ride more on my toes than I normally would, but you pull so many G’s on the lip of a jump like that. I knew I would’ve collapsed going off the thing. I was pretty bummed to have to walk away from that one.

Cam Zink: Yeah. Definitely. And there is the job side of it because that’s how I fed myself and will now feed my family. I actually tone it down a bunch because I do have to stay healthy and pay the bills, but I’m still gonna go for it just as hard, but now I try to do more of the stuff in between that puts food on the table. These days there are a lot of guys that ride because of the fame and sponsorship but I still flat–out ride simply because I love it.

Cam Zink: Well it started when I was nine years old. Hopefully some people in Britain know about Kooka components, but that was my dad’s friend. He used to own a doughnut shop, brought some weird bikes around and got my dad’s hyped on it, and that’s how I got into mountain biking. Did my first DH race when I was nine. My brother Howie got into it as well. He would never even ride but would just slay it. He was a natural. Granted, Howie was two and a half years older than me, but it came easier to him than me. Mostly we rode skateparks and dirt jumps. He was the best in town. Didn’t matter what we tried to do, growing up he would always kill it and was the inspiration. He was better than me. He raced downhill back in the Jason Codding days so I would always spend my off time trying keep up with him. And then it was the classic story of chicks and cars and stuff he got out of it and I kept going and going. When I was 16 in junior national dual slalom champs, it was Kyle Strait and me in the finals. I won, and that was pretty huge. He’s better than me at slalom now but it was still a big deal for me. Also there was no market for freeriding at that point.

Cam Zink: When I saw Kirt Vories’ part in ‘Evolution’, it was a game changer. Tailwhipping and barspinning a full suspension bike off of a chainlink fence was nuts. That video didn’t really get distributed but it was mindblowing to me. I grew up wanting to be EC (Eric Carter), wanting to be (Shaun) Palmer, but I was just building up my skills as a bike rider. I got signed to Syndicate when I was 17 because I could jump and race. I was like, ‘I’m getting paid! To them ten grand wasn’t shit, but I was like ‘hell yeah, I’m buying a car’! That was a lot of money to me at the time. So that year at the first Crankworx I got 5th place with a crash in my final run, but apparently I’d turned a lot of heads. At the time, Martin Whitely (23 Degrees Sports Management) was my manager and at the next race he said to me, ‘I don’t know what you did but everyone is talking about you’. That was 2004. Later that year at Rampage I almost spun my DH bike off of a cliff, but hurt my back and had to walk away. Strait crushed it that year, but people got that first real glimpse of my riding. That was the year.

In ’05 I blew out my knee and tore my ACL, and my meniscus, which hurt like a son of a bitch. I rode Crankworx and Rampage with a knee brace because I knew it was following up to ’04 and would be my break–out year. I got a New World Disorder film segment and knew I just had to do it. Then in ’06 I got 44^th at Mt St Anne World Cup. That’s a great result, but I was killing freeride at the time. I had to go with what was working. That same year I won Crankworx. That was pivotal. No racer gets paid for 44^th, ya know?

Cam Zink: In terms of what? Where you think it’ll plateau?

Cam Zink: It ain’t gonna come to a halt any time soon, but like any sport it’ll eventually flatten out, I just don’t think that’s right around the bend or anything. I’m 27 and I don’t think I’m even close to peaking as an athlete. Things are developing in every direction. Big bike stuff is getting bigger and bigger. So is the slopestyle stuff. The tricks are getting more complex and those two separate disciplines are merging in many ways. Everything is getting gnarlier. The equipment catching up adds to that as well. Just look at the development of a single small part like my rear shock for Rampage alone. It’s taken a few years just to get it right for that one singular event. This stuff takes time to reach perfection, but in the long run it makes it easier to push the envelope. We’re only now seeing the very first production slopestyle bikes hit the market. The sport is still young. The first Crankworx was in 2004 and people were riding either DH bikes, hardtails, or XC bikes they modded into slope bikes and jumping onto teeter totters. Those days are over. The courses are far better. They consist of bigger, better jumps where you have more air time to do the tricks you need to do without risking your life simply because you had to hit a poorly built jump. Look at the mega ramp, it’s 60 feet and safe as hell.