If there’s one week in Whistler’s busy summer event calendar that’s a slam dunk, it’s Crankworx. There’s racing. There’s Joyride. There’s film, photography and other artistic mediums that celebrate mountain biking. Then there’s the parties.
When I meet mountain bikers in other parts of the world and they bring up their dream of making the Whistler pilgrimage, I advise against visiting Whistler during Crankworx. While the atmosphere during the week is unlike any other mountain bike festival, it’s not the most ideal for exploring Whistler’s trails for the first time. Conditions are usually hot and dusty. You can’t get accommodation anywhere because it’s booked out months in advance by all the visiting athletes, entourages and industry folk. There are trail closures for various races, so you may not get the chance to ride exactly what you want. And good luck finding a spot on a patio in Whistler Village after your day of riding the Whistler Mountain Bike Park.
However, if you’re coming specifically to spectate by day, party by night and riding is completely secondary, then I couldn’t recommend Crankworx enough. It doesn’t cost anything to watch the world’s best riders in their competitive element. And if you’re an amateur racer who loves to cheer on riders trackside, you’ll have a full week.
The Canadian Open Downhill on the 1199 track is setting the stage for an eventual World Cup or World Championships event, so a no-brainer. If you enjoy speed, jumps and scrubs, the A-Line Air DH and Official Whip-Off Championships have it in spades. If you want to ride around the valley while you spectate, you can follow the stages of the Canadian Open Enduro. New for the last couple of years are dedicated adaptive events for tech, flow and slalom. The speed at which these adaptive riders take corners will probably surprise you.
Then there’s Joyride itself, the marquee event which draws tens of thousands of physical spectators to the Boneyard for arguably the most impressive show of the week. After several years of strong afternoon winds and a blinding sun dipping behind the horizon, the slopestyle competitors had enough of dropping in with the added risk. Joyride is now a morning event, meaning many spectators are viewing it with coffees in hand rather than vodka Red Bulls and making the collective post-Joyride hangovers a whole lot more manageable.
When I heard Crankworx was turning 20 this year, I had yet another reason to feel old. The mid-to-late 2000s were formative years for this mountain bike festival as it suddenly eclipsed Whistler’s previous marquee event, the World Ski & Snowboard Festival (WSSF), both in attendance and attention.
“It became so successful that the resort started asking us about pushing Crankworx back into August, because we made July too busy, too successful,” says Mark “Skip” Taylor, a marketing consultant and key influencer behind the original WSSF before kickstarting Crankworx in 2004. “In all the events and projects I’ve ever run around the world, it’s the one that I use as a model of event marketing driving sport tourism. Especially if you have the right teams (of stakeholders) working together to embrace it and support it at all levels.”
Vail Resorts became Crankworx owner when it purchased Whistler Blackcomb in 2016, but promptly sold it in 2020 to Crankworx Live Marketing (headed by Crankworx World Tour general manager Darren Kinnaird) and Montreal-based Boombox Group. Since then, the festival has missed one year due to the pandemic, launched a regional Summer Series of events around B.C. and has continued to hold World Tour events throughout the year in New Zealand and Australia.
But the mountain biking industry is not without its headwinds. The post-pandemic overstock of bikes and apparel still lingers, with many companies slashing their marketing budgets, downsizing their growth targets and in some cases, filing for bankruptcy protection. You never really hear about those issues as a Crankworx spectator. Drink tickets are still being handed out at parties and races are still going ahead. But behind the scenes, there are likely some difficult conversations happening about how much money title sponsors can continue to pour into a global event series like Crankworx every year.
Despite the aforementioned industry headwinds and every other proverbial stick-in-the-spokes, what I do know is the Crankworx team is incredibly resourceful and has managed to pivot multiple times in the last few years to keep this signature Whistler event going. Will it sustain to make it to the 30 or even 25-year milestone? I hope so. But like the WSSF, there will come a time when mountain biking’s biggest freeride festival runs its course, to either fade away or evolve into its next chapter. I’m confident it will be the latter.
Vince Shuley will see you at Joyride.
