Met Chris at the Crankworx competition and t
old him just to ride his ride and not to worry about what was getting thrown down. He had a solid first run and played it safe, as most of the top guys tend pull out the big bag o tricks only when they need to.Chris's second run was not as good as the first although it could've been much better if he hadn't have wrecked his seat after landing a superman seatgrab a little off which bent the seatrails and twisted the saddle. The top part of his run was clean, flowy and had a tuck no hander followed by a superman seatgrab off the first two jumps. If he had of been able to follow that up with a turndown near the RaceFace wall, a one foot corked flip off the next jump followed by something else I think he could have moved into the superfinals as it didn't seem to take much; Vanderham got in with a series of motowhips so I know it would have been possible.
The judging was pretty good for the most part but a few of the calls really made the spectators question what was going on; with a 360° stomped clean at the last drop clearly the right guy won - Congrats go to Ben Boyko.
Even though the usual suspects had a few big crashes which one could question how they made it to the finals, I think the fans want to see the recognizable names and the judges know if they can get a second chance they do have the talent to give the crowd what they want. In the end you want an entertaining contest even if you have to play with the numbers a bit
. You could see guys like McCaul, Zink, Bearclaw really throwing caution out the window just to please the fans and they paid with some nasty crashes for the attempts, but big props to them and I'm glad everyone walked away.Paul Bass had a big crash at the end after landing a tailwhip off the TV-tron drop when his front tire crumpled. I think he could have rode it out if the transition wasn't so flat. You could see the younger guys taking major whiplash once they landed and I bet 90% of the riders were just too scared of the landing to pull anything major.
The buzz I've been hearing is they'll probably change the course up for next year, but the battle will still rage on whether they want a course -similar to the elevation jumps- that a BMX guy on a
hardtail can win or keep it massive to segregate mountain biking from dirt jumping. Its pretty clear the fans want more and bigger tricks and there's a lot of pressure to give them what they want, so I suspect a slightly smaller course next year with more flow.From my perspective I hope they can keep the same size but work on the transition a bit more on the last drop. Also try to increase the flow a bit more with less criss-crossing the mountain with nothing in between and lastly have the course laid out early and keep it the same as I heard they kept changing it right up until the last minute.
Chris and Alan will be heading back to Auz. to train all winter. They w
ill be back next year and hopefully we can get them both in the contest and other slopestyle events.I'll put up more in the next few days, but I'm kinda burnt out... It was a long week and its time to do some recovery.
