Words: Simon Makker
Pictures: Simon Makker
As good as
it gets
------------------------- Crankworx- NZ ----------------------For the first time ever, the epic mountain bike festival,
Crankworx, set foot in the Southern Hemisphere in the MTB
mecca of Rotorua, New Zealand. FreestyleXtreme was there to
witness the mind-blowing action first-hand.
I
T WAS ABSOLUTELY TEEMING
down and it had been for more
than two hours. The rain hammered
the canvas of the media tent
with a steady roar, creating a thin
curtain of water as it cascaded
over the doorway. While journalists and
photographers from around the world
hunkered down and tried to make some
inroads into their workload, organisers
of the inaugural Crankworx mountain
bike festival in Rotorua frantically
checked weather radars and forecasts.
While this downpour had been
predicted, it was heavier and lasted
longer than anticipated. The climax of
the festival, the Slopestyle contest, had
already been delayed two hours to give
the huge tarp-covered course a chance
to dry out properly, but to out-oftowners, it seemed inconceivable that
the event could go ahead.
Only the locals seemed somewhat
confident that the Rotorua soil – a
perfect mixture of golden loam and
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dark volcanic ash – would soak up the
inundation and allow the event to go
ahead.
Those locals were on the money. After
three hours of solid rain, the clouds
broke up and sunlight began to stream
onto the Skyline [Gravity Park] hillside.
As soon as staff and volunteers began
removing the tarps from the perfectly
sculpted dirt jumps, the soil began
erupting in steam as the sun absorbed
the surplus water from the soil.
Within another hour, thousands
of spectators almost miraculously
appeared along the entire nine-jump
course, hungry to see the world’s best
Slopestyle riders throw down and get
their 2015 season off to a perfect start.
After such a dismal start to the fifth and
final day of Crankworx Rotorua, there
was a tangible feeling that we were
on the cusp of witnessing something
incredible. u