Remember when we sent Madman Mundt out to a super secret mission in Nicaragua? Well its finally time to announce the objective behind said mission: it was to ride along with Austrian downhill mountain biker Max Stöckl as he attempted to break the World Speed Record for a mountain bike on soil —as opposed to snow, for which he also has the record (but that’s another story). Mundt ventured off with Stöckl, a Red Bull camera crew and several lackeys to the wilds of northern Nicaragua to capture this title, selecting the black monolith of Cerro Negro volcano to accomplish the task. It was a wild, hot, dangerous adventure — rolling through the dirt roads that cut through the savannahs of Nicaragua in the back of a pickup truck, drinking copious Toña cervazas and Flor de Caña rum, playing checker with the locals, commissioning custom leather belts and eating more steak with jalapeno sauce than should be gastronomically legal. And basically exploring all that the beautiful Central American country has to offer (which is a lot). We’ll do a post later on the trip, flush with plenty of photo galleries, but for now we’ll concentrate on Max Stöckl and his courageous accomplishment.

For three days Stöckl trained to set a new World Speed Record for serial (aka “production”, as opposed to custom) mountain bikes on soil on the Cerro Negro volcano in the Cordillera de los Maribios — the most active and populous chain of volcanoes on Earth. To train him Max brought along legendary speed mountain biker Eric Barone — the man who held the current record. When Barone established that record in 2002, he also happened to have the most horrific accident in his life — crashing at 106.88 miles per hour (163 kmph) nearly taking his life (see the infamous video for that accident after the Jump — which you’ll want to watch, as it is absolutely mindboggling). Then on that fourth day at Cerro Negro, Max Stöckl ascended the steep coal black slope of the volcano and descended on it faster than any person ever has on a mountain bike. The speed was ludicrous, and we at LIAS send a big congratulations to Max Stöckl and his team at Red Bull. Next up for Mad Austrian? Stay tuned…

Two exclusive galleries of breaking the Downhill Mountain Bike Speed Record at Cerro Negro in Nicaragua below. Hit the Jump to see the near fatal crash of Eric Barone attempting the same record in 2002…

The accident at 163 kmph that nearly took the life of legendary speed mountain biker Eric Barone