Thrills, spills and riding bikes with friends – the spirit of Crankworx is back with a vengeance in Innsbruck, and the Austrian festival has crowned its first champions under sunny skies, surrounded by the snowy Austrian Alps. “It’s really good to be back racing. Enjoying the mountains and riding bikes with friends,” said Adrien Loron, who took the W for the pro men in today’s Dual Slalom Innsbruck. The former King of Crankworx has earned many a Pump Track gold, but today claimed his first in this discipline. The iXS rider said there were some positives of the six months…
Author: Tomas
Valentina ‘Vali’ Höll is looking forward to the start of the shortened 2020 race calendar. The Austrian will start her season in the Downhill race at the Crankworx World Tour in Innsbruck on October 4 before turning her attention to the World Championships in her home country resort of Leogang between October 7-11. Höll, who has now finished her school studies, will also compete in the senior category of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup at the stops in Maribor and Lousã after dominating the junior scene the last two seasons. Here is what the 18-year-old had to say about her career…
Bike Kingdom Lenzerheide opened its gates for the first time at the start of the 2020 summer season – and they did it with a bang: “The Legend of Tommy G” led the way in a spectacular, albeit not too serious fashion. A kingdom for mountain bike riders was to arise in the Swiss Alps. Not even mixed-up 2020 could stop it. The late bike opening was compensated by a corona-induced bike boom. Looking back, the rulers of the Bike Kingdom are more than happy with its debut season. The Bike Kingdom App proved itself not only as the digital…
The Crankworx World Tour is on track to light up screens around the world in one week’s time, debuting the return of live mountain bike racing on Red Bull TV. For many of the world’s top mountain bike athletes, Crankworx Innsbruck will also mark their return to the field of play. For one athlete in particular, this return to racing represents even more. “It feels amazing to be coming back,” said Brook Macdonald, who broke two vertebrae on a training run at the Mont-Sainte-Anne World Championships last August. I haven’t raced in over a year, so to be able to be back in…
Can you imagine riding some of your favorite trails on the way home? Nope… Neither can we, nevermind riding all your favorite bikes! Well, for Vali Höll it’s an everyday feeling. It’s a ‘Vibe’! Starting at her local pump track in Leogang, Vali goes for ‘one more lap’ of her favorite trails before heading to the Spielberghaus for Ice Cream, her hardest decision is which bikes to ride! Breathtaking views, big mountains and fast-flowing trails, the Saalbach region of Austria is undoubtedly a great place for mountain bikers and has clearly had a huge impact on Vali’s career. Saalbach is…
In first part of our trip to Swiss Graubünden we took you to the enduro trails on the nearby mountains and towns which are a part of Bike Kingdom. This time we’re gonna take you to the Bike Park Lenzerheide which is a central point of whole area and was our main station. Bike Kingdom Bike Parks Bike Kingdom includes two bike parks – Lenzerheide & Alpenbikepark Chur. In each of them we will find 5 different trails for all types of riders. Due to our short stay in Bike Kingdom we had time only for Bike Park Lenzerheide where…
The dust in the Ellweiler quarry has settled after another epic week of mountain biking at the Audi Nines presented by Falken. That means it’s time to sit back and enjoy the week’s biggest moments with the Trick Highlights edit. After spending much of the past year cooped up inside, the Audi Nines athletes were chomping at the bit to throw down their best maneuvers on this year’s next-level setup. The result? A shot bag filled to the brim with groundbreaking tricks, including several world’s firsts. In the Best Trick (Slopestyle) category, Sweden’s Lukas Skiöld took first place with a…
To introduce his all new POC collection, Fabio Wibmer has planned something big. He gathers a crew of cameramen, a photographer, his trusted stunt double and a renowned director and heads to Saalbach to create the right atmosphere to present the new “Wibmer style” POC helmets, kneepads, elbow pads, sunglasses and goggle as perfectly as possible. But some plans just aren’t meant to work especially when, at first, Fabio’s stunt double is injured – forcing the Austrian to do all the riding himself – and secondly, the director has very specific ideas about what a “good” production should be. Luckily,…
The 2020 edition of the Audi Nines presented by Falken is currently underway! In collaboration with Bikepark Idarkopf, a crack team of top international riders has gathered in a repurposed stone quarry in Germany’s Hunsrück-Nahe bike region for a session of the superlative kind. In the GoPro Course Preview, fans can get an exclusive first look at this year’s out-of-this-world mountain bike venue. New and Improved Venue In the Course Preview, course builders Sam Reynolds (GBR) and Clemens Kaudela (AUT) are joined by Erik Fedko (GER) to show the ins and outs of the 2020 Audi Nines venue. On the…
Austrian town Schladming was our second destination target on our vacation trip. After few days in Swiss Bike Kingdom we went to the one of the most famous austrian bike parks. Local trails are well known for downhill fans – there were few UCI World Cup rounds. Riders fought for points in this place six times, but the last time was in 2009. The town of Schladming Schladming town is located at altitude of 745m above sea level and it’s a small town in federal state of Styria with just under 7000 inhibitants. In the old days it was a…
Graubünden is the largest and easternmost canton in Switzerland. It has international borders with Italy, Austria, and Liechtenstein. The biggest town of Graubünden is Chur, which is also the oldest town in whole country, but in mountainbikes world the best known city is Lenzerheide. It’s only 18km to the south from Chur and it’s known mostly from organization of UCI Mountain Bike Downhill World Championships in 2018 or DH World Cups. Bike Kingdom Bike Kingdom, the most important cycling center in Graubünden, made its debut in the 2020 season. But what excatyl is the Swiss Cycling Kingdom? In a nutshell, it is a…
Three weeks. 15 competition and practice days. 73 hours on the bike. 167 kilometers raced. 4590 meters descended. It’s been a time. The marathon multi-discipline mountain bike series that brought together 25 of B.C.’s top mountain bike athletes at the end of July wrapped today with one final race. For the fastest woman, her race run in the Sun Peaks Air DH was the ultimate victory lap. Vaea Verbeeck both clocked the fastest time of the day amongst the women (a 6:42.593), and with it clinched the overall women’s CLIF Crankworx Summer Series Championship title. It’s really sweet. I love…
Exploring the countryside and mountains whether by bike or foot is becoming steadily more popular. The difficulty of hikers and bikers sharing the increasingly crowded trails is often given too little consideration. The bike destination of Lenzerheide is aware of the problem and as part of its rebranding in 2020 as ‘Bike Kingdom’ has already taken the first steps to create a more peaceful and harmonious coexistence on the trails. The conflict of ‘Biker vs. Hiker’ is an issue that is becoming more obvious due to the current circumstances, even in larger bike destinations like Lenzerheide with over 900 kilometers…
18 days in to back-to-back-to-back racing and training, B.C.’s best mountain bikers still managed to turn it on when it counted, on a grueling, long and physical track in the Maxxis Sun Peaks DH. I love this track. The top two and a half minutes of this one was so fun. It’s fast and straight and everything you want in a Downhill track. It was really physical. Four and a half minutes long. That’s basically the longest Downhill track you’ll find anywhere in terms of World Cup length or Crankworx length.I felt like I needed a bit of redemption after…