Crankworx Announces a Fourth Tour Stop for 2017
The Crankworx World Tour, born out of Whistler’s 10-day celebration of gravity mountain biking, will grow to add another international location for summer 2017: Innsbruck, Austria.
Innsbruck is the only city in the world to have hosted three Olympic Games and have a history with the kind of competition Crankworx does best: defying gravity. Having staged the famous Air and Style Contest since 1993, several Boulder World Cups, and the UCI road biking World Championships, it is the perfect place to set up the fourth Crankworx World Tour stop.
“No other summer sports event fits so perfectly to Innsbruck as Crankworx. World-class mountain biking, combined with a festival for real bike fans all over the world, it will definitely inspire Innsbruck, the capital of the Alps, in the same way as the participants and spectators will get fascinated by Innsbruck’s unique alpine flair,“ says Karin Seiler-Lall, Innsbruck Tourism CEO. The 2017 calendar year marks a decade and a half of Crankworx competition, and the third year of the Crankworx World Tour. Innsbruck will become the fourth stop of this tour, joining Rotorua, New Zealand, Les Gets, France and Whistler, the Canadian home base of the tour.
“We’ve had a vision for a while to share Crankworx with some of the best mountain destinations in the world. It has been the defining celebration of this sport for some time, but taking our community out to new international locations for fans to connect with and ride alongside the athletes has really taken it to a whole new level,“ says Darren Kinnaird, Crankworx World Tour General Manager.
An ancient city with plenty of European ambiance, Innsbruck’s burgeoning trail system has also received strong reviews from those who have raced or ridden in the area.
“I have been riding a few different trails there and it’s insanely good riding. I was surprised by how many trails, good mixture—some flowy, technical and some big hills around. It’s a cool scene to go to,” said Colombian downhill star, Marcelo Gutiérrez, who won the Garbanzo DH for a fourth time this week.
Innsbruck offers a unique combination of urban and alpine lifestyle, and will likely combine both elements in its Crankworx stop, potentially even working in competitions like the pump track into the inner city scene.
“As Crankworx grows, we’re learning the locations and cultures we visit like to put their own spin on the festival and it’s definitely added to how we perceive mountain biking and its fans. We’ve been influenced by our stops in Rotorua and France, and never cease to be surprised by the number of fans who make the journey to other international stops, inspired by the athletes they’ve seen compete,” says Kinnaird.
Exact dates for all of the 2017 Crankworx World Tour stops will be released in the fall of 2016.
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I am here in Innsbruck, not sure where you want to hold this so called competition. The only "track" here in Innsbruck is at best a single trail!
The "infrastructure" is again a joke! 1 lift to take all the tourists to the top of the mountain and the bikers wait and go up 2 at a time every 15 mins. Not sure when the last time Karin Seiler-Lall went to go check it out?! But i can count on 1 hand how many DH riders actually go up and ride over a weekend.
As for the facilities, yes its help the olympics here a few times, thats due to having a Bobsleigh track, Ice rink and a Ski jump. So what has that got to do with holding a SUMMER DH bike festival? hahaha. These people are deluded! These are the very people that stop us from riding and building new bike parks! Apart from privately owned land resorts, such as Bergeralm (Bikepark Tirol) and Muttereralm, In the past 5 or so years, nothing has changed or is new! A new "trail" has been built from half way up the hill at which your expected to push up!! Which isn't really the whole point of the DH idea as thats kind of encroaching on Endure ;-)
This whole festival would be suited to Leogang or Fiss, But i imagine they're not allowed due to their own sponsor bike festivals they hold each year. The nordkette dh bike race is lets face it wank! We get a few good standard riders come to make an appearance and to bring the crowds in, but lets not kid ourselves in thinking if they had a better offer they would decline pretty quick!
IMHO they messed up giving it to a city that doesn't believe in DH or biking at that point, Not really the standard to be setting...
good news though to have another european resort hosting the event
Due to its wintersport resorts Austria has an amazing infrastructure for mtb tourism, the distances between fairly high quality bike parks are tiny compared to other countries and although you might not see it in DH WC there is a strong growing DH scene and full parks on every weekend and not only locals.
In addition to this, Innsbruck is perfectely located (still pretty close to munich airport) and easy accessable via the highway and seems to have massive experience in hosting big events in the past.
Also everyone who ever witnessed the Nordkette Downhill Trail knows this does have a lot of potential, plus it probabaly can help the problem with illegal trails, create new ones and build awareness for mountainbiking within the city's community/public.
Luckily , younger Tyrolean are pushing to kick out these idiots, and are trying to bring a smart input to the decision making and thanks to them, we are getting some official trails, but there is still a huge work to be done. An other problem is that this place is not BC, it s the Alps. And here it's steep, full of cliffs, and one day it's sunny, everything dries, the day after you get a storm. The consequence is that the erosion is really high, and therefore, building sustainable trails is very hard.
On an unrelated note : are the waves nice these days ? im flying tonight to bali
They want to do it in Muttereralm... Last year, the first trail in this "bikepark" was supposed to open in June... it actually opened in august (and full of flaws). This year, a second trail was announced for June, then delayed to the beginning of July and then to mid July.The second race of the "Innsbruck downhill cup" was supposed to take place on this trail on the opening day, and was cancelled...
Innsbruck is an awesome place, but there are clear structural deficits in the mountain bike scene here, and it s just stupid to organize such event when it s 95% sure it will fail.
I will just finish with a simple fact : Innsbruck is the most windy city of Austria, and muttereralm is subject to frequent wind from the west (20% of the season), and south (foehn 5% of the season but ultra strong) that generally lead to a shut down of the lifts...Now you want to ask to the locals the number of afternoons thunderstorms per week...
leogang would also be a way better choice but I think they dont have the budget.
Liebe Innsbrucker Gemeinde,
blamiert uns nicht vor der ganzen Welt !!!!!!!!
Slopestyle at 10:30= 1:30AM PST and 4:30am EST