Mountain-bikers enjoy ‘awesome’ week
Another successful Crankworx Rotorua ended yesterday with crowd figures looking to surpass previous years — and director Tak Mutu promising a “bigger and better” event in 2018.
More than 1000 athletes took part in the international mountain-biking festival, with more than 300 volunteers helping out between March 25 and yesterday.
Mutu said it had been an “awesome” week.
“The crowd numbers were easily on par with last year, we’re pretty confident it was up even facing major challenges with the weather.”
He said they managed to “make lemonade out of lemons”, with the official Oceania Whip-Off Championships moved to Friday night because of the weather, a decision he said was welcomed by the crowd.
There were many highlights, with the “massive” Downhill, the Slopestyle “smashing it out of the park” and the Foxhead world premiere of Ride Your F‡%king Bike, a mountain-biking roadtrip film in honour of the late Stevie Smith, Mutu said.
“It was shown at Eat Streat on Thursday, and from the photos I’ve seen people were literally shoulder to shoulder.”
Mutu said the plan for next year was to go bigger and better. The 2018 edition would be from March 17 to March 25.
Peak Safety co-director Mark Woods said the week went well from a safety and medical point of view.
He said the athletes were “really receptive” to the concussion protocol introduced this year.
A number of riders were pulled from their races because of concussion, but a third of those were cleared by doctors to get back racing.
Woods said there were 19 medics and six doctors and nurses present on the busiest days.
— Rotorua Daily Post