Gallery: Crazy tricks and sick whips at Crankworx Whistler 2016
Sure, there are other mountain bike competitions and festivals but this is the grand daddy of them all
Words and pictures by Stuart Kernaghan
Crankworx Whistler started back in 2004 and over the last dozen years it’s become the world’s largest mountain bike extravaganza. Sure, there are other mountain bike competitions and festivals – there are even other Crankworx events in New Zealand and France – but this is the grand daddy of them all.
It lasts 10 days, has a huge demo area with new bikes lined up for test rides, an expo area where exhibitors show everything from the latest armour and tires to bikes and hydration packs, and competitions that attract the biggest names in mountain biking.
It’s hard to capture all of that in a few photos, but we’re going to try. Here is a sampling of the spectacle that was Crankworx Whistler 2016.
There were plenty of mountain bike celebrities on hand to sign autographs on the final weekend of the event. Thomas Vanderham, Geoff Gulevich and Brett Tippie were holding court at the Rocky Mountain Bikes booth.
There were also tributes to riders who weren’t there: Stevie Smith, who died in a motorbike accident in May 2016 and Kelly McGarry, who died of heart failure in February 2016. The #longlivechainsaw was all over the mountain – even on a set of oversized chainsaws hanging from a giant stump.
There were plenty of bikes on display in the Whistler village, ranging from this electric-powered fat bike to…
…this vintage Mongoose cross country weapon from the 1980s, still in pristine condition.
Racing went on all week long, with Friday night’s highlight being the dual slalom races. Downhill and dual slalom legend Leigh Donovan (left) took on Emilie Siegenth in this heat.
The big race on Saturday was the Canadian Open Downhill. The course sent the riders down some of the steepest tracks on the mountains but that didn’t stop spectators from acting like mountain goats to watch the action.
And yes, it really was as steep as it looks.
The highlight of the weekend was Sunday morning’s Red Bull Joyride slopestyle event. Winds on the course were fierce at times and many riders didn’t even make it through their first run cleanly, but that didn’t stop thousands of people turning out to watch.
The first rider down the course was slopestyle legend Cam Zink (in the fluorescent jersey), who injured his ankle earlier in the week during training. That run down the course turned out to be his Crankworx swan song and he announced this was his last-ever Crankworx appearance – much to the relief of his wife (in the green cap).
Staying hydrated in the Whistler summer heat was key. Fortunately for people who were dying for a drink while watching Joyride, there was a bar set up right underneath the whale tail jump half-way down the course.
Crashes were the story of the day for quite a while, until Brett Rheeder from Mount Albert, Ont. threw down an amazing first run that scored a 93.0 that ended with this one-footed can back flip combo on the final feature of the course. That score held for the remainder of the competition and Rheeder knocked four-time Crankworx champion Brandon Semenuk off his throne.
Stay tuned for more highlights from Crankworx Whistler 2016, including highlights from the pits and a brand new bike from Trek.
