Few riders embody modern freeriding as creatively as Vero Sandler. But her career didn’t begin on the sport’s biggest stages. It started with a shovel in her hands. We visited her at home in Wales to talk trail building, community, and why great riding begins long before the drop in.

The small, unassuming house sits tucked away in the lush green landscape of North Wales, surrounded by meadows, rolling hills and trees. But when we arrive, it isn’t the scenery that grabs our attention. It’s what rises up just beyond it: Vero’s backyard. With its huge jumps and perfectly sculpted berms, it looks far more like a full blown bike park than a garden. The ratio of living space to playground is utterly ridiculous, and that’s exactly what makes it perfect. It feels as though mountain biking didn’t simply find a place in her life. Instead, it became the foundation around which everything else was built.

Even this evening, life revolves not around the house but around that very backyard, which has already played host to several Backyard Battles. It’s easy to see why. Immaculate jumps, perfectly shaped berms and a shipping container that serves not only as storage but also as the start drop. This backyard really is something special.

Vero isn’t riding alone tonight. Her partner Sam Hodgson is here, along with Kade Edwards and Kaos Seagrave, and none of it feels like a staged lineup of stars. It feels like an ordinary evening in Vero’s world, where the freeride elite drop by for a jump session and all we can do is stand there and watch.

Sandler moves through this little world with remarkable ease. She’s warm, open and always smiling, yet never focused solely on herself. While people are sending jumps, chatting and playing with her dogs, she’s constantly looking out for everyone around her. It quickly becomes clear that Vero doesn’t just want to ride herself. She wants everyone to ride. She wants everyone to have fun. She wants everyone to feel welcome.

That atmosphere is what makes the place work. For all the spectacular lines, Vero’s backyard doesn’t feel like an exclusive training ground. It feels like somewhere friends come together. Everyone is welcome, everyone digs, and that’s what gives the place its energy.

The idea that Wales would one day become that place for Veronique Sandler was never part of the plan. As a teenager, the Kiwi had just one goal: to race the Downhill World Cup. After being selected for the Junior World Championships, she dropped out of university and threw herself fully into racing. For the next three years, she followed the World Cup circuit, spending her summers racing in venues around the world before returning to New Zealand each winter.

After the 2016 season, she couldn’t afford the flight home to New Zealand, so she stayed in Wales for the winter and found a job. What began as a practical decision soon became the turning point in her career. She stopped riding against the clock and found a completely different side to mountain biking..

Everything just fell into place without me really planning anything, which is extremely lucky.

Our visit to Vero comes as part of our test of the new Santa Cruz Nomad. A bike called Nomad, a name that suggests constant movement, meets a rider whose defining story is all about staying put. Vero didn’t drift from spot to spot. She stayed in Wales and, built something, and that build has become a defining part of who she is.

Riding is for sure more fun. I build so that I can ride. It’s all in the name of biking. – Vero on whether she enjoys building or riding more

For Vero, riding always comes first. Even so, almost everything that defines Sandler’s riding today can be traced back to trail building. She built her first trails as a teenager, when she was 13 or 14 and out riding with her brother. Back then, it wasn’t about a career, creating content or chasing the perfect line. It was about experimenting. Building something, riding it, crashing, reshaping it and riding it again. That simple process still lies at the heart of how she sees mountain biking today.

Where Freeride Really Begins

Trail building is rarely glamorous. It takes plenty of hard physical work and just as much patience. Shifting dirt, reshaping features, testing them, then making changes and doing it all over again. But for Sandler, that’s exactly where the creative side of the sport begins.

You can get really creative on the tools and just experiment. There’s kind of no rules.

Her trails are rarely ever finished projects. They are constantly evolving. A feature might work perfectly well, yet still have the potential to be even better. A line may look complete, only to spark a fresh idea. Even though every build starts with a plan, that plan rarely survives for long.

We’ll discuss what we want to build and we’ll have a plan … but we never stick to it. Like never ever.

Sometimes the terrain hides something nobody had seen . Sometimes the best ideas only emerge once the digging begins. And sometimes it takes that first run on the bike to realise a line needs to be built differently. For Sandler, trail building isn’t the opposite of riding. It’s simply the first part of the same process.

It’s only on two wheels that you truly discover what the shovel changed. When you build, you ride differently. Not just with greater control, but with a much deeper understanding.

Without getting into digging and building, I would never have progressed on my bike as much as I have.

That may be the single most important sentence for understanding Vero Sandler. Her freeride style wasn’t shaped by talent alone or by countless laps in the bike park. It was built, quite literally.

No flower beds grow here, only jumps. In North Wales, Veronique Sandler has created her own personal riding paradise.

Community is key

Vero’s backyard is far more than a playground for grown ups. It’s a meeting place, a workshop and a creative space all at once. A place where riding isn’t just something you experience, but something you create together. When you build together, you don’t just share time, ideas and challenges. Every shaping session helps everyone progress together.

Vero often talks about community. Even during her racing career, it wasn’t the seconds or the results that kept her hooked. It was the days spent training. The conversations in the pits. Travelling and experiencing it all together.

I never actually enjoyed the actual race aspect of it. It was the social environment … that’s what I’ve been searching for the whole time.

Today, she has found exactly that again in the freeride scene, through trail building, backyard jams and legendary events like Darkfest. For Sandler, community isn’t just a byproduct of the sport. It’s the very reason freeriding works.

For me community is number one. It’s everything. It’s why I enjoy biking so much.

When Sandler sails over huge jumps in the bike park, it all looks effortless. Almost second nature. But behind that effortless style lie countless tonnes of dirt. Endless hours with a shovel. Countless attempts, small refinements and constant reshaping.

It becomes especially clear when we’re standing with Vero and her crew on the Vision Line at Revolution Bike Park. The features don’t follow a rigid formula. They feel organic, playful and bold, as though they began as an idea and were brought to life with nothing more than a shovel and a pile of dirt. Despite their sheer size, they blend remarkably naturally into the hillside, almost as if they had always been part of the landscape.

The creation of the line was documented in the film of the same name. We first visited Vero there back in 2020, taking a closer look at her journey from downhill racing to freeriding. You can find that feature here.

Vero’s shaping skills are now in high demand. Most recently, she and her partner Sam helped shape the second section of the new Hupfar jump line in Sölden.

And here again, her community minded approach to the sport shines through. Sandler doesn’t build just for herself. She builds lines that inspire, challenge and bring people together. Her vision doesn’t end at her own front wheel. That’s where it truly begins.

In a sport that so often revolves around the next trip, the next event and the next big moment, Sandler has found something different: a place where progression doesn’t just happen, it’s built.

Shovel by shovel. Line by line.

She still enjoys riding more than building. But she builds to make riding better, for herself, for her friends and for everyone who will one day roll into one of her lines.

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Words: Lars Engmann Photos: Max Schumann