WORLD’S MOST PRESTIGIOUS SLOPESTYLE MOUNTAIN BIKE COMPETITION TAKES SHAPE IN WHISTLER

Red Bull Joyride set to launch Saturday, August 18 with world’s best battling for World Championship title

WHISTLER, B.C. August 13, 2018 – The excitement, pressure and anticipation have been building all season. Saturday, August 18, the biggest event of the season, Red Bull Joyride, will go live to the world from Crankworx Whistler, with 14 of the world’s best slopestyle mountain bikers descending on mountain bike mecca vying for the prize.

In addition to the Red Bull Joyride win up for grabs, the event will also crown the Crankworx FMBA Slopestyle World Champion. One additional accolade is on the line. Each year Crankworx offers up the Triple Crown of Slopestyle prize to an athlete who can accomplish a nearly unimaginable feat: winning three out of four slopestyle contests in one season. With back-to-back wins at Crankworx Innsbruck and Crankworx Les Gets, one rider, Nicholi Rogatkin (USA) is on deck to fight for the Triple Crown.

To take the title, Rogatkin will have to pull it all together when it matters most. Red Bull Joyride is the only Crankworx Slopestyle event he hasn’t won. Meanwhile Brett Rheeder (CAN), currently the discipline’s most successful rider competing on the circuit, will undoubtedly be fired up to challenge. Rheeder won the season’s opening contest at Crankworx Rotorua, and has finished second behind Rogatkin at the past two. He’s also currently in the lead for the overall, gunning to lock down the Slopestyle World Championship title at the last stop.

But with the eyes of the world set on Whistler, and the pressure cooker environment that creates, it’s anyone’s game. Rogatkin and Rheeder both had strong seasons in 2017, trading wins across the Crankworx World Tour, but their success didn’t translate in Whistler. Rogatkin finished 14th at Red Bull Joyride 2017, while Rheeder finished 15th.

The complete list of 14 riders set to take on the invitational contest are:

Diego Caverzasi (ITA)

Erik Fedko (GER)

Max Fredriksson (SWE)

Thomas Genon (BEL)

Szymon Godziek (POL)

Emil Johansson (SWE)

Matt Jones (GBR)

Tomas Lemoine (FRA)

Anthony Messere (CAN)

Ryan Nyquist (USA)

Brett Rheeder (CAN)

Nicholi Rogatkin (USA)

Torquato Testa (ITA)

Bernd Winkler (AUT)

Come Saturday, the chosen 14 will drop in onto the sport’s biggest stage in front of tens of thousands of fans in Whistler, and hundreds of thousands who will tune in live around the world on Red Bull TV and crankworx.com.

And while the energy is reaching a fever pitch around the world, it’s been building in Whistler for months.

Here’s a look at what’s gone in to bringing the world’s biggest slopestyle course to life:

3: months of dirt shaping and feature building at the base of the Whistler Mountain Bike Park

16: crew members
5: countries represented on crew (Canada, USA, Scotland, New Zealand, Australia)
7: features, including two on/off features making for:
9: judgeable features

The course has been carefully designed, sculpted and buffed by the Joyride Bike Parks crew, led by Paddy Kaye. Kaye has been responsible for designing and building the course for this event every year since 2011.                    

Each year he and his team take feedback from athletes in order to make courses that are constantly improving and progressing with the sport. This year he says his focus was on creating a course that’ll challenge riders but give them a good chance of putting down a clean run and getting to the bottom.                       

For 2018, the length of the course will stay the same as 2017, while two hips have been replaced with berms, allowing for more flow and giving riders some time to regroup in two spots (before the four-pack and before the cabin).

The seven features on which riders will be judged include:

The course is primed, the athletes are ready and the world is waiting.

Watch Red Bull Joyride LIVE on Red Bull TV and crankworx.com:

Saturday August 18th 4:30 pm PDT
Sunday August 19th 11:30 am NZST
Sunday August 19th 1:30 am CEST

Crankworx Whistler: Schedule

News: Press releases
Photos: Flickr
General resources: Media kit
Media Relations:

Julia Montague

Crankworx World Tour

E: julia@crankworx.com

For media updates on the Slopestyle World Championship, sign up here: http://bit.ly/2DFjzdv

 

Richard Bos

Freeride Mountain Bike Association

E: Press@FMBWorldTour.com

P: +49 (89) 3866709-15

For media updates on the FMB World Tour, sign up here: http://bit.ly/2kCuIOR

About the Crankworx FMBA Slopestyle World Championship

The Crankworx FMBA Slopestyle World Championship (SWC) is an elite-level championship series representing the pinnacle of the sport of Slopestyle mountain biking. The SWC brings together the discipline’s top athletes to compete on its biggest stage, the Crankworx World Tour, all vying for the distinction of being named the Slopestyle World Champion. The SWC is a joint venture of the Crankworx World Tour and the Freeride Mountain Bike Association (FMBA).

About the Crankworx World Tour

The Crankworx World Tour is where ordinary humans perform the extraordinary and launch into the realm of the unimaginable. From slopestyle ninjas to downhill champs and enduro experts, sideways steeze-masters, slalom slayers and pump track pros – they all ride faster, climb further, fly higher, and go bigger than what was once thought to be possible, taking on the world and the challenges set before them with seemingly superhuman power and passion. In 2018, Crankworx brings their feats of two-wheeled magic to four stops around the world. Come along for the ride as the Crankworx World Tour travels to Rotorua, New Zealand (March 17-25), Innsbruck, Austria (June 13-17) and Les Gets, France (June 20-24), before bringing it home to Whistler, Canada for the 15th year of Crankworx competition (August 10-19).

About the Freeride Mountain Bike Association (FMBA)

The FMBA is the world governing body for the sport of freeride mountain biking. The FMBA was founded in 2010 and is registered as a non-profit organization in Munich, Germany. The FMBA promotes Mountain Bike Freeride Sports which comprises the development, governance and structure for freeride disciplines: Dirt Jump, Park, Slopestyle, Big Mountain. The main objective of the FMBA is to continuously develop and support the progression of the sport, athletes and events. The FMBA owns and administers the FMB World Tour. The FMB World Tour is the official international circuit of amateur and professional Freeride Mountain Bike competitions. Athletes must compete at FMBA sanctioned Diamond, Gold, Silver and Bronze Events on the FMB World Tour to collect points for the FMB World Ranking, in order to qualify for elite-level Crankworx FMBA Slopestyle World Championship events. The FMB World Ranking is a roll-over ranking system, which considers the three best results of each athlete in the past 52 weeks. The FMB World Ranking includes all FMB World Tour licensed athletes.

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