Whip Off Worlds
Crankworx brings riders together, that’s for sure. People schedule holidays for this festival to ride, and the industry come to decompress and impress. You can share laps alongside your heroes or race beside your idols. You rub shoulders with a thousand other people just like you each day, regardless of yours or their place in the hierarchy of results or endorsements.
Lear Miller and the masses on Crabapple.
Sven Martin, circus ring leader, delegates to Trevor aka Aziz Ansari…
Thomas Vanderham was going higher than everyone today… with the exception of Jamie Goldman who was higher than Curiosity.
However, at the UnOfficial Whip Off Worlds you can get closer to the action than you could ever imagine. Nothing but a thin streak of air separates the back wheel of some of the world’s best riders from the heads of the excited crowd. And often, as Ian Morrison can tell you, things might go bump.
Whip-O-Meter 2013.
Brendan Fairclough, hot off the win at Dual Speed and Style, showing off the latter of the two. Photo ~ Blake Jorgenson / Crankworx 2012
Jamie Goldman in the stratosphere. No prize for space travel today, though. Photo ~ Malcolm Mclaws
This year, the organizers of Crankworx took the brainchild of Sven Martin (and support of VitalMTB) and made it official, but fortunately they still let the Crabapple beast keep its informal jam format and loose observation to competition. Thousands of people crowded into the sunny Crabapple meadow and overran the massive jumps that the Bike Park have been good enough to let cultivate into some serious senders. Over two hours a motley crew of riders – many fully pro, mostly all deft handlers – sessioned the Crabapple Hits.
NSMB’s 2012 AIRprentice Mark Matthews made it into the final 12 riders, going for a little shoulder buzz here. Photo ~ Malcolm Mclaws
Brendan Fairclough was sporting his brand new, delivered 5 minutes before the event, matte black with gold TLD D3 to match his cafe racer…
T-Mac getting close to the crowd? Or the crowd getting close to T-Mac?
Vanderham sending it high over the crowd. Photo ~ Blake Jorgenson / Crankworx 2012
Trains were ran and cheers were continous then slowly Sven and his helpers attempted to ween out the best from the imitators until one rider was crowned the nastiest rider out there. This year, Tyler McCaul took the $1000 cheque, but only narrowly from Thomas Vanderham. The “judges” played back the captured video and analyzed the photos, assessing all the top riders for how sideways they could get it, the style in which they did so, whether they landed cleanly, and height. It wasn’t science, just plain subjective judging. However, no one should deny that T-Mac deserved the title.
Tyler McCaul was Mr. Consistent out on Crabapple today and he took home cheque to show it. Photo ~ Blake Jorgenson / Crankworx 2012
Long live big jumps, wild spectators and huge whips.
Looks like removing the “un” from in front of “official” didn’t affect the vibe up on Crabapple too much. These guys have boost!
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