They call him “Lil Rojo”. He’s got riding skills, he’s got tricks and now he’s got two Crankworx Speed and Style wins in 2023.
Garret Mechem qualified for Friday’s contest in first place and barely lost a step all day long. Jacob Murray, Daniele Ferri, Peter Kaiser and Bernd Winkler all tried to take him down, but none could match his blend of top-flight velocity and gravity-defying acrobatics.
“I’m stoked that it’s all over,” Mechem said in a press release. “Coming into this event, it was kind of stressful knowing that I’ve only missed one podium. It was stressful, but it was fun. I loved it. First time doing the whole series, I’m amped.”
Winkler was jaw-droppingly impressive in his own right as runner-up, while David Lieb joined his fellow American Mechem on the podium by finishing third. Two-time King of Crankworx Bas van Steenbergen rode a fifth-place result to second overall in this year’s season standings behind the newly-crowned Tuhoto-Ariki Pene.
“Second is all good,” van Steenbergen remarked. “Obviously, I would have loved to have won, but it is what it is. Tuhoto did amazing this week, so I can’t really complain about that.”
With multiple short-notice withdrawals in the women’s field, Harriet Burbidge-Smith and Robin Goomes received byes directly into the semifinals. They ended up facing one another for gold in a rematch from Innsbruck, where Goomes narrowly broke through over her close friend.
This time, Burbidge-Smith reversed the tables for her second championship in as many days. Goomes, though, pulled off multiple backflips and added another silver to go with the one she earned in the Whip-off. Shealen Reno took home bronze, and Natasha Miller was tops among Canadian women in fourth.
“It’s been a pretty good couple of days,” Burbidge-Smith said in her typical understated fashion. “Yeah, it’s been good, I just had so much fun! I love being in Whistler, riding. I know [Goomes] is going to push it as hard as she possibly can, and that’s what I love about her.”
‘A tough pill to swallow’
To thrive in Speed and Style, one must truly possess both in equal measure. It’s not enough just to be fast and mistake-free, for the discipline rewards riders for high-flying tricks by taking time off their runs according to a set formula. It’s a caveat that not even the swiftest downhill and slalom athletes can consistently outrun, as van Steenbergen and Jackson Frew discovered this week.
Granted, there was some controversy in van Steenbergen’s case. The Vernon native wields a clear speed advantage over his quarterfinal rival Kaiser and looked to be moving on after Kaiser wiped out twice in the second of their two runs. Yet, Crankworx Speed and Style rules dictate that an athlete can only face a maximum time deficit of 2.5 seconds to their opponent, even if they crash.
The rest of each man and woman’s score is determined by how spectacular their tricks were. For that reason, Kaiser advanced to the semifinals on the quality of his superior aerial maneuvers. Understandably, van Steenbergen wasn’t thrilled about the outcome.
“Somebody crashing next to me and still moving on in Speed and Style was very unexpected,” he said honestly. “Not that it would have impacted the overall, but that was a tough pill to swallow.”
Newly-minted dual slalom champ Frew was likewise unable to outpace Winkler and his deep bag of tricks, winding up seventh.
Slip and slide
Kaiser’s quest for victory ended in the semifinals with a loss to Mechem, but the Austrian wasn’t the only one to go down. His compatriot Winkler bailed out across the finish line in his own semifinal against Lieb, tearing his distinctive leopard-print pants and donating some skin to the Boneyard track. Lieb’s luck ran out the very next run, and he ate dirt at the tail end of an ill-fated backflip.
Even Goomes took a tumble just before the line in her gold-medal match against Burbidge-Smith, showing just how difficult it can be to incorporate acrobatic moves into what is essentially a dual slalom run and remain upright.
“If the body is still working, you have to keep your body warm,” said Winkler about how he kept his composure after falling—and after a tough practice round. “You have to say to yourself: f— it, you have to do this now. The course was pretty difficult for me, so there was not really a plan, but I qualified second and pulled through the whole race, so I’m just out of words.”
Mechem, though, was clean from start to finish. The redheaded Santa Cruz native now boasts half a dozen Speed and Style podiums dating back to 2019 in Innsbruck, emerging on top in both Whistler and Cairns this year. Even so, he too holds a healthy respect for the Boneyard track.
“It took a lot of skill to get down,” Mechem added in a release. “It was definitely speed and style. You had to know how to ride flat turns, you had to know how to ride like a mountain biker to get down this. I think the biggest deciding factor was the bottom corners. I had to be on point with my braking.”
Full results are available online. Pique Newsmagazine has you covered for the final two days of Crankworx Whistler.
