efremont

It's a sad day for the athletes and Crankworx. I was part of the original 3 that founded Crankworx's and organized it for the first 3 years with a deficit until some of the bigger sponsors helped out. most of the Slopestyle athletes at the time showed up weeks prior to help with the design and building of the features. I have not been part of Crankworx since 2005, but it seems that there has been some discussions for sometime regarding what the athletes need and what the organizer can do to accommodate them. As an organizer you need to spend more money to attract more sponsors, live TV shows and entertainment cost have gone up, running events in place like Whistler have gone up, its harder and harder to find volunteers, so you need to pay for more staff and so on. there always a solution to these discussion, what can you remove from the event so that you have more cash to pay athletes. The organizing committee should have for each location an athlete or 2 sitting at the table helping the organization make the right decision for both the Athlete's and the organizers. At the end of the year I don't think Crankworx organizers are taking home boat loads of cash, it's probably a break event type event. The more you grow the more money you need. Athletes need to be careful, this could affect sponsorship in the long term for Crankworx, I have seen over the years great events go away because of sponsorship money went to the next best thing, sport evolves and changes all the time. If you want to see Crankworx survive an other 20 years I suggest you figure it out sooner than later.