Dare to Stair in Derelict Downhill Seven Dutchman and a Czech meet in Amsterdam and head out looking for a mountain…! After plenty of bike kilometres, Sunday morning saw what initially had seemed a futile mission in the notoriously flat Netherlands end with eight of the worlds best downhill mountain bikers meeting for a completely unique and insane downstairs-race in a ramshackle eleven-story building in the heart of Amsterdam. AMSTERDAM (NED). Not far from the aptly named Amsterdam Central Station, the eight mountain bike Olympians found what they had been looking for. Led by Dutchman Rob van den Wildenberg, fifth at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the troupe of world-class bikers stormed the former POST CS mail distribution centre to help with the demolition of the ramshackle building much to the surprise of some labourers still working on the site! The 400 metre course comprised 11 floors, 324 stairs and no fewer than 50 vertical metres from top to bottom. In the morning, when we took the snap decision to hold a race here I have to admit I had a funny feeling about it, but what are we supposed to do? Weve got nowhere else to train. The steep, narrow stairways and the half-demolished floors were incredibly tough to ride: rather than jumping over tree stumps, branches, roots and other natural obstacles, we had to overcome broken windows, smashed-up filing cabinets and dangling cables, laughed Ivo van der Putten (NED). The 22-year-old fought his way to a narrow …