It may be the biggest mountain biking festival in the world, but at its core Crankworx Rotorua is just one big family. From the athletes to the photographers, media and management, the celebration is all about mountain biking. It is high energy with athletes pushing their boundaries further with every run and some truly mind-blowing performances.
Downhill racing and the Mons Royale Dual Speed and Style are two of the key events, but the jewel in the Crankworx crown is its slopestyle. This is a course designed by Tom Hey and the late Kelly “McGazza” McGarry – an oversized collection of giant gap jumps designed flawlessly into the canvas for the world’s best freeride athletes. On its own, this is a spectacle of gymnast-like athletic precision merged with velvety smooth bike handling skills … and some terrifying gaps high up in the forest canopy. It attracts riders the calibre of Brandon Semenuk, Brett Rheeder, Sam Pilgrim, Nicholi Rogatkin (yep, the guy who fell off the cliff at Rampage, only to dust himself off and continue his run) and the rest of the world’s very best freeride mountain bike riders.
For 2016 Nicholi, from the USA, added an all-new trick into his race run – the Twister – an impossible, ground-breaking 1080. It alone was not enough to peg back Canadian Brandon Semenuk who rode into gold with his “dream run”.
But as if that wasn’t enough then the course was dedicated to the memory of McGazza who died suddenly on February 1, 2016, from a cardiac arrest. A silent train down the slopestyle course – with all the riders on board – welled up tears in nearly every eye in the bike park. McGazza would have been smiling as his biking family gathered around his loved ones and paid tribute to one of their most respected fallen heroes. It was an emotional day. A day of healing.
Kelly always liked to sneak in a surf when he could, so I felt no guilt at all when I hit the West Coast for a day of waves around Raglan in the middle of the event. The promised swell didn’t quite deliver, but the scraps in a surfing mecca like this still offer up playful walls and Kelly would have been beaming on them.
See you at the beach … Derek
PS Want to watch the Crankworx highlight reels? Here they are.
PPS Want to contribute to Kelly McGarry's Memorial Trust to help the mountain biking community he loved? Here's the link.
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