West Jordan is throwing open the gates of its Ron Wood Wheels Park for a first-of-its-kind race that pits some of mountain biking's biggest names against each other on a custom dirt-and-wood course built for maximum spectator drama. The inaugural MTB X event brings a lineup of Red Bull Rampage competitors and World Cup racers to the West Jordan facility, with free admission for the public across the entire weekend.
According to West Jordan City Hall, the event opens next Friday with a session running from 3 to 6 p.m. that lets attendees ride alongside professional athletes and collect autographs from the talented field of bikers on hand. Official city listings, per Visit Salt Lake, confirm the primary race weekend runs September 18-19, with the Friday session serving as a community open ride and pro meet-and-greet ahead of Saturday's official competition, live music, and food trucks. Early social media teasers referenced an earlier kickoff date, but the municipal calendar establishes the mid-September weekend as the event's main dates.
The competitor field reads like a who's who of freeride and downhill mountain biking, with Visit Salt Lake naming Jaxson Riddle, Tyler McCaul, Kyle Strait, Braydon Bringhurst, Eddie Reynolds and Boston Bryant among the athletes set to compete. The event mixes disciplines, blending downhill timed racing with big-air freeriding in a format organizers designed to feel unlike anything else on the fall mountain bike calendar.
A Hometown Rider's Vision Comes to Life
MTB X was co-created by West Jordan native and professional mountain biker Mitch Ropelato alongside Joe Sirlin, owner of COR Athlete and the designer behind Phase 2 of Wheels Park, according to the City of West Jordan. Ropelato grew up in the city before building a professional riding career, and organizers describe the event as bringing a national-level extreme sports competition home to his roots.
The city's newsroom explains that MTB X uses a head-to-head format rarely seen in mountain biking: each athlete gets three individual runs on the custom course, but only their single fastest time counts toward the final standings. The course itself combines big jump features with technical obstacles, and unlike traditional cross-country races that stretch across miles of remote trail, it does not prescribe any particular bike style to competitors.
Built for Spectators From the Ground Up
What sets MTB X apart from typical mountain bike competitions is visibility. The city notes that the course at Ron Wood Wheels Park is fully visible from start to finish from any spectator viewing spot, a deliberate design choice meant to create an arena-style experience close to the action rather than the scattered, hard-to-follow format of races held on remote trail networks.
That accessibility fits the venue itself. Ron Wood Wheels Park sits at 8600 S. Ron Wood Parkway inside West Jordan's 95-acre Ron Wood Park recreation complex, a hub that serves as the city's primary municipal sports center, as Hoodline previously reported. The park first opened its initial phase on October 12, 2024, as a 153,000-square-foot all-wheels facility built for mountain bikes, skateboards, BMX and wheelchairs.
A Bigger Bet on Extreme Sports Infrastructure
The facility's growth has been financed through a public-private model combining West Jordan municipal funds, corporate funding from mining operator Rio Tinto Kennecott, and state grants from the Utah Division of Outdoor Recreation. That funding structure has already paid off in ambitious ways: this past summer, West Jordan broke ground at Wheels Park on Utah's first public vert ramp, a 40-foot-wide, German-engineered structure framed by repurposed shipping container viewing platforms that's scheduled to open in spring 2027.
MTB X arrives in the middle of a crowded fall for Utah mountain biking. The sport is drawing heavy regional attention this September, with the event competing for eyeballs alongside the Fox US Open at Deer Valley and the WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Cup at Soldier Hollow, according to Cycling West. Utah hosts several elite professional cycling events each fall, and West Jordan's entry into that circuit signals the city's broader ambition to establish Ron Wood Wheels Park as a genuine regional draw for action sports fans, not just a neighborhood recreation stop.
