Crankworx Rotorua. What can I say? Take the World’s biggest mountain bike festival to the Southern hemisphere’s most bike mad town, throw in an amazing trail system, a new gondola uplifted bike park and top it all off with several inches of magic hero dirt and you have a recipe for something special.
The Skyline Bike Park Rotorua’s Mt. Ngongotaha hosted the first Crankworx event south of the equator and the Crankworx crew and the people of Rotorua absolutley crushed it. It went off. As title sponsor of the Mons Royale Dual Speed and Style, the Mons Royale team were there to kit out the town in Mons gear via our pop-up shop in the event village, support the Mons Royale team riders, soak up the event atmosphere and even get a little riding done.
Rotorua’s volcanic dirt is the perfect substance for mountainbiking. It can be crafted into beautiful ribbons of flowing singletrack, scuplted berms or jaw-dropping features. The trail crew, led by local legends Chris and Adam from Empire of Dirt and Queenstown based Tom Hey and Kelly McGarry earned the adulation of mountainbiking’s elite by turning Ngongataha’s virgin loam into an arena of truly epic proportions – A drool worthy dual course, a pump track set in a natural amphitheatre and packed with an amped up crowd and the pièce de résistance – the mind-blowing slopestyle course.
Highlights? Martin Soderstrom’s sheer consistency through the Mons Royale Dual Speed and Style which saw him top the podium; Breakfasts at Zippy Central; A demo zone at which riders could take the bike of their dreams for some laps of the bike park; Cruising Rotorua in our VW Amarok Canyon; Brett Rheeder’s outstanding Slopestyle runs; chasing the Mons team train down the sweet berms of Hipster; soaking post-ride in a natural hot spring and above all, the stoke that the people and riding community of Rotorua brought to the event. A word of advice – Book a ticket to New Zealand next March. Bring your bike. Come to Crankworx 2016, then head South to Nelson, Wanaka and Queenstown. Oh, and keep a little space in your bag for some of our SS16 Bike range. It’s going to be awesome.
A massive thanks to the people of Rotorua, the Crankworx team, our friends at Volkswagen New Zealand, WideOpen Distribution and everyone who volunteered and made it happen.
