A Conversation with Colton

Dive into this brief conversation with Red Bull action sports athlete and street freestyle rider Aaron Colton

Motorcycles soar over Formula 1 cars. Stunt performers produce jaw-dropping reactions in slow motion. And a variety of vehicles rip up and down Hank Aaron Dr.

This past weekend, Red Bull Showrun put on a unique experience for the Atlanta community to get up-front access to F1 cars, motorcycles, and Red Bull sports athletes.

Prior to his demo activation, I had the opportunity to speak with Red Bull action sports athlete and street freestyle rider Aaron Colton . He discussed his early career beginnings, mentors in the industry, and where his work has taken him beyond competitions. Here’s a look at our conversation:

You learned to ride at the age of two, how instrumental, particularly with your father, was family to your career?

I mean, it's huge because when you think about it, the barrier to entry, more than the motorcycle, is the system in getting it to where you would ride it. There's inevitably a period in your life when you're going to have to have some support with that. But motorcycling within my family was something that my mom didn't do so much. My dad was more of a hobby. He really enjoyed it. He had at various points in life gone in and out of it. And when I was younger, it was given to me for Christmas when I was two years old, and still to this day, I own that motorcycle. It was a marquee moment. I've been to many, many places, by family, throughout that process to learn how to ride, and then eventually you get to driver's license age and venture out, and you're kind of on your own more.

That’s amazing. You're also a SAG stunt performer. What movies or shows have you been in? What would you say is your favorite stunt?

Man, you know it's funny. I've been in all kinds of movies. I just spent a couple weeks on the new Michael movie. I've spent some time on Six Triple Eight and Mayor of Kingstown. Wolves with Brad Pitt and George Clooney. I've done quite a few. Sometimes it's a big motorcycle role, sometimes it's a car role, sometimes it's with neither. But it's been an industry that I've been doing more and more, and Atlanta being such a huge scene for that, it's very cool. I'm actually having quite a few both friends and coordinators come out to see this event. It'll be fun to host them at something in my field of play when I've worked with them so much on that side.

You are such a versatile athlete. How do you navigate different disciplines? Do you go in with the same mindset, or is it different for you?

At one point in time, and it's crazy to think this because I don't right now, but at one point in time, I held three different discipline professional racing licenses. So it was a lot. It was a lot. But the one thing is, the attributes from one sport do transfer over to the other, and they were all motorsports based. I spent a lot of time training for each category specifically, and I recreationally ride way more than just stunt riding. You know, there's so many more disciplines that I do, but that's just out of the passion I have for motorcycle riding.

Obviously you had your father, but throughout your career, were there any other mentors or people that you looked up to?

Absolutely. I had many different mentors throughout my life. In sport, you have some that are aspirational you see on TV, and then you have some that come closer to home. Specifically in my sport, there was an athlete by the name of Christian Pfeiffer who was a Red Bull athlete for many, many years, even prior to him transferring over to stunt riding. And then on a big, broad stroke spectrum, I was always a huge Travis Pastrana fan. That was something for me aspirationally throughout you know grade school and whatnot. I would see all those videos, and it was just a crazy thing for me to eventually be to the point where I've done you know, now I've done video projects with him. And at a very young age, it was something that I thought was so far out of reach, but absolutely, they were both very instrumental within my success.

You talked earlier about your childhood. Walk me through the very first competition, the very first moment that you got into it, versus where you are now.

Even though I started riding when I was two years old, I didn't really carry on with it past like learning how to ride until maybe four years old or so. When I really got into riding, like I would consider my start was at twelve, and that was personal motivation of wanting to get into riding very, very much. Throughout that whole process, we started seeing this stunt riding scene to the side, and it was very interesting to me. This early internet, pre-YouTube, but still web forums, DVDs, and seeing these different performance motorcycle riders, and it was just an addictive thing for me. To see it and just to see how incredible those were, and just like anything when you're young, you fixate quite heavily on something you're into. And by the end of 2005, when I was 13, I'd entered my first competition. Only two years later, I'd won the national championship. So it's just a crazy uptick that we had within it. At that point in life, it was full dedication to the craft, fully and completely. But that's been a long time ago because I honestly haven't competed since 2013. I spent from 2005 to 2013 competing all the time. I spent a long time doing that, but now we're doing so many more things with international activations, live demo activations like this, video projects. It's just a different world of using my same skill set within different avenues and it's been something that's continuously kept the career growing.

Right, because you're also into custom design builds?

Yes, exactly. Everything that I ride, I build and design. So all of it, and all everything that I build, design, and ride, you can see all of that content from start to finish online. So, you can see that on either Instagram or TikTok social format, or on long format YouTube, depending on the project. But I document all of the builds that I do.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much Aaron.