Last year at the inaugural Crankworx Rotorua there was one event that we had our eyes on supporting at NZ’s biggest festival of mountain biking and one event only: Dual Speed & Style. We wanted something that clicked with our core Mons values of providing technical performance in a damn good looking package and Dual Speed & Style ticks all those boxes and more. It’s a battle royale between tech and style.
The format is simple: Two riders go head to head down a course filled with jumps, berms, rollers and boner logs that test the full spectrum of their abilities as a bike rider, and at the end only one will emerge victorious.
All photos: Camilla Rutherford Photography
Both speed and style are taken into account by the judges, and the choice is left to the riders whether they pin it to the bottom, or lay it all out in the air in the quest for points and glory. Equal parts Slopestyle and Dual Slalom, neither the racers nor the freestylers have any real advantage, which makes for match-ups that are tighter than a roadie’s undies.
Kyle Straight had it figured out in the early rounds; “the key element to winning the race is staying off the ground, and besides staying off the ground it mainly has to do with doing the right tricks.”
Back for a second year, we are excited to turn it up a notch. The course is looking like a sculpted masterpiece thanks to the boys at Empire of Dirt who have been busy making dirty humps with their diggers and turning the slopes of the Gravity Park into the ultimate biking playground.
Freshly pulled from the Mountain Bike Rotorua Facebook Page
Check out the highlights vid below from last year’s event that was taken out by Martin Söderström and be sure to tune into the LIVE WEBCAST next Thursday March 10th from 5-7pm as the ultimate battle between style and speed will go down at Crankworx Rotorua.
