Red Bull Joyride might have gotten away this year, but there was no way British Columbia could let the summer go by without a world-class MTB Slopestyle event. As luck would have it, Brett Rheeder and Matt MacDuff have been keeping themselves very busy in SilverStar Bike Park lately. Over the last two years, they have built an absolute fire of a Slopestyle course with tons of potential to drive the evolution of the sport above and beyond.
When the world's finest riders showed up in BC for the Crankworx Title MTB Slopestyle presented by CLIF, this was exactly what happened. Watch the top 3 runs of the contest that will most likely go into MTB history books. In order of appearance:
3rd place: Dawid Godziek (POL) 89pt 2nd place: Erik Fedko (GER) 91.66pt 1st place: Emil Johansson (SWE) 95pt—Red Bull Bike
reposting this from the other article since this is the new and relevant one:
(...)these people deserve all of the praise for what they can do on a bike, it is absolutely insane.
but as a spectator, i could not be bothered to watch a whole event of people doing effectively the same 3 tricks in different rotations. It is also not what they shape slopestlye to be, but what is favoured by the judges and thus what will be presented by the riders in their runs.
what slopestyle needs to become more interesting and not be irrelevant in 3 years is interesting courses with more variety: why not build a sharkfin jump? some flat and long jumps, quarterpipes, courses with different line choices etc., there are literally infinite options, yet every course is this: jump -> berm -> step-up -> step-down -> berm -> jump.
Also get some judges who are able to judge flow and style, being able to land something without dying is not 'style', clean is not stylish per sé. For comparison, go watch Larry Edgar ride BMX vs. Daniel Dhers, both have distinctly different ways of riding and utilizing parks, but both are able to win stuff because BMX judges at some point realized that a 20ft high invert air is just as amazing as a flair quadruple-flippy-spinny-barhump
What are you even talking about? Emil and Erik are quite the opposite of what you complain about, often going for amplitude instead of another rotation or combo. And they are the ones on the top steps.
Yeah don't let it do what skateboarding did in the 2000's. Once you started needing an advanced degree in tricks to understand whats going on it started feeling boring and contrived. Bigger courses with different terrain and more points for blasting stuff with style instead of just seeing how many spinny things you can fit in.
references: chase hawk riding pretty much anything
I definitely see where you are coming from on this. New crazy features would be awesome. The biggest issue I see with contests where the clock isn’t king is it inevitably becomes subjective. I think we all like ‘style’ but how do you quantify? Tricks make it a little easier to judge, but even that gets weird. Twister or oppo 360 tuck no off a drop? Pretty much every judges freestyle sport has this issue. Skate, Bmx, ski, snowboard, FMX, etc.
Basically I just enjoy the show, tons of awesome stuff went down in this contest. Props to all the riders
Emil is amazing but watching his run its a few 360 variations, a backflip, and the rest is all just tailwhip variations, I think oppo gets drastically overscored as its very subjective, left handed people for instance, find doing things both ways easier as they much more used to. I would rather watch Rogatkin or Godziak stomp a run any day of the week.
What you're describing is the same thing that we saw in the BMX world during the late 90’s and early-to-mid 2000’s. Flippy-spinny was the name of the game on dirt and street courses, and to some degree on vert as well. It wasn’t until kids started throwing down technical street stuff that the game changed. For example, while watching this contest I was thinking how different it would be to see someone backflip-to-manual onto a whale tail then tailwhip off…or blast the lip and barspin-to-manual onto the HANDRAIL of the whale-tail then 360 out. Guys in BMX are doing this stuff now, only a matter of time before those tricks transition to slopestyle. Within the next decade, likely.
It sounds like you don't understand what you're watching so maybe you're not a fan of slopestyle.
This post is no different than someone on an NFL website saying, "I don't get it, they just line up and run into each other. There's no difference, its all the same".
That shit was insanely exciting to watch and its sad you didn't get to experience it.
Yup. 100% agree. I grew up on MTB but I get really bored of watching slopestyle. BMX holds my attention way more, especially since different tricks are styled differently between riders. Flow and style still count in BMX. MTB is way too technical for me. That being said, it does seem like that is making its way into BMX. Andrew Meier can do a quad tailwhip but can't manual. I love the kid, but hopefully it's not a sign of things to come. Looking at something like Nitro Circus BMX versus either Larry Edgar or Scotty Cranmer's crew.. I'll take the latter. It's still about fun.
Maybe the internet and shredits have melted your brain and caused you to have an attention span of a four year old. That's not a problem with slopestyle, that's a you problem. Try reading a book sometime. It'll be hard to not stop and look at your phone at first, but after a couple days of doing it you'll actually find it quite relaxing.
@typx: I completely agree with you. Slopestyle has just gotten super boring, along with the whole freeride scene in general. Now don’t get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for what all these guys are doing and have done, but, it’s definitely gotten a little stale at this point unfortunately. You can only see/watch the same things so many times before you just get, well.. bored of it. It’s also evident that I’m not and you’re not the only ones thinking that based on the interactions on the slope/freeride articles as of late on here and elsewhere. Nobody cares anymore. I’m hoping rampage coverage stokes the fire a bit in the next couple of weeks, but we shall see.
@SirWonky: Yeesh, i would usually not care to respond to such comments, but what can you expect from a swiss guy. I've been riding bmx for 15 years and did my fair share of dirtjumping. I care deeply about the future of these disciplines, which is why i took the time to write a comment and even offer possible solutions.
Totally on point. Isn't that pretty much the reason why Semenuk is not competing in slopestyle anymore and rather focuses on stylish film projects? This 4min recap was watchable - and there's a reason why the FEST series are so damn popular. Big jumps with loads of style are just nicer to watch than spinnyspinnyspinspin x50. Similarly, any fun sport that became Olympic became pretty boring since more spin = more points.
And to the 'haters': no, I cannot do any of the tricks they do, nor can anyone here except the guys in the video. After a week of practise I could - at best - clear all the jumps, but that's it. There is no doubt about how insanely hard it is what they do, and nobody is saying that they are bad at what they do. This is about the direction / concept of slopestyle.
It's unfortunate that the judging has come down to favouring bar, flip, spin, whip repeat as many times as possible. It has taken a lot of creativity out of the runs, and makes it feel like you are watching the whole field try to put down the same run. It's still absolutely nuts to see what these guys can do on a bike. I miss the days where someone would throw down a massive big air motor move that wasn't on anyone's radar, and would really be unique. Doing so now would hurt your score so badly that you are throwing away your run because you didn't cram as many bars in as possible.
Emil is absolutely incredible, we've never seen this level of dominance in slopestyle. From 2012 - 2016, it was back and forth between Rheeder and Semenuk. Between 2017 and mid 2019, it was back and forth between Rogatkin and Rheeder. Since Joyride 2019, no one is coming close to Emil in any event, although the field is probably more stacked than ever. He has already on a record breaking win streak, and I think he will easily shatter records for total wins.
Emil is a nut. Usually I think those combo tricks with extra bars tossed in last second can look a little messy but he really smooths them out and makes it look a lot more flowy than in the past. He’s got it dialed.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert at slopestyle course design but having that section where they all really needed to haul on the brake and come to an almost stop didn't look all that great to me.
Great riding though!
SirWonky, well, considering I can truck driver a bmx, gap out to around 35 feet on mtb, and have raced DH in British Columbia.. I probably am not the person you're talking about.
34 Comments
(...)these people deserve all of the praise for what they can do on a bike, it is absolutely insane.
but as a spectator, i could not be bothered to watch a whole event of people doing effectively the same 3 tricks in different rotations. It is also not what they shape slopestlye to be, but what is favoured by the judges and thus what will be presented by the riders in their runs.
what slopestyle needs to become more interesting and not be irrelevant in 3 years is interesting courses with more variety: why not build a sharkfin jump? some flat and long jumps, quarterpipes, courses with different line choices etc., there are literally infinite options, yet every course is this: jump -> berm -> step-up -> step-down -> berm -> jump.
Also get some judges who are able to judge flow and style, being able to land something without dying is not 'style', clean is not stylish per sé.
For comparison, go watch Larry Edgar ride BMX vs. Daniel Dhers, both have distinctly different ways of riding and utilizing parks, but both are able to win stuff because BMX judges at some point realized that a 20ft high invert air is just as amazing as a flair quadruple-flippy-spinny-barhump
references: chase hawk riding pretty much anything
Basically I just enjoy the show, tons of awesome stuff went down in this contest. Props to all the riders
This post is no different than someone on an NFL website saying, "I don't get it, they just line up and run into each other. There's no difference, its all the same".
That shit was insanely exciting to watch and its sad you didn't get to experience it.
Andrew Meier can do a quad tailwhip but can't manual. I love the kid, but hopefully it's not a sign of things to come. Looking at something like Nitro Circus BMX versus either Larry Edgar or Scotty Cranmer's crew.. I'll take the latter. It's still about fun.
This 4min recap was watchable - and there's a reason why the FEST series are so damn popular. Big jumps with loads of style are just nicer to watch than spinnyspinnyspinspin x50. Similarly, any fun sport that became Olympic became pretty boring since more spin = more points.
And to the 'haters': no, I cannot do any of the tricks they do, nor can anyone here except the guys in the video. After a week of practise I could - at best - clear all the jumps, but that's it. There is no doubt about how insanely hard it is what they do, and nobody is saying that they are bad at what they do. This is about the direction / concept of slopestyle.
Usually I think those combo tricks with extra bars tossed in last second can look a little messy but he really smooths them out and makes it look a lot more flowy than in the past. He’s got it dialed.