After a few months of voting and judging Red Bull’s high profile photographic competition Illume has finally drawn to a close with 24 year old Chris Burkard’s photo of Peter Mendria riding waves on Chile’s West Coast winning the Overall award in what is the world’s biggest action and adventure sports photography competition. Chris’ overall win was out of 22,764 photos submitted to the contest by nearly 5000 photographers. You can check out the category winners on the Red Bull Illume site here. Spoke contributor and Wanaka Local Camilla Stoddart made the final 50 (which you can check out here).
Carl Jones on route to secure the NZ relay team 16th place (which sounds way better than second to last) Photo Patrick Fallon
The 2010 UCI Mountainbike World Championships officially opened last night at a spectacular opening ceremony in Parliament Grounds in Quebec City last night. The stunning Parliament Buildings formed a beautiful backdrop for the teams presentation and a huge crowd welcomed the 750 athletes from 32 countries to Canada on a balmy evening in the old quarters of the city. READ MORE
Judging by this trailer ‘Life Cycles’ is going to live up to the hype and then some! Too awesome. Oh and Spoke will be presenting the official NZ premiere tour in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch. We are just confirming dates now… As soon as they are locked in we will post up details.
The ever pro-active Tim from T.Whites bikes has a bunch of events coming up, something for everyone methinks (he also does all his own graphic design!)
….Details after the jump… READ MORE
This weekend just passed was all about Cyclocross for a select group of enthusiasts from around New Zealand. The weekend kicked off on Friday night with a few Belgian beers at Gothenburg—a Hamilton craft-brew bar / restaurant—with event organisers ‘The Pain Train’. Planning, smack talking, stories of days gone by, stories of days to come and general banter were dished out from one end of the group to the other, most with some sort of Cyclocross theme, but some with a smattering of Cross-dressing talk!? READ MORE
I’m not very good at maths (so I’ve just conferred with Spoke reviewer and banker Mark Dangerfield on these stats) but in response to Dirt Magazine being stoked on having five Brits in the top ten I just thought I’d break it down for them how much radder we are. So it goes like this: Great Britain has five riders in the top ten at the Windham World Cup. Their country has 64 million people so that means that they had a ratio of 1 in 12 million people in the top ten. New Zealand has three riders in the top ten at Windham, and we have 4.5 million people so that means that we had a ratio of 1 in 1.5 million people, which I think is pretty good, and in fact means that we are roughly seven times better at downhill than the UK. If you want a real laugh though check the USA stats; they have 307 million people and one person in the top ten, which means that we are around 200 times better than them.
That’s right, after Greg Minnaar and Gee Atherton rode an almost identical season—both with two wins and two second places—it came down to the World Cup Final this morning and Gee took the win, with Greg in second and Blenki in third. The top ten looked good for us Kiwis though with Brook MacDonald in 8th and Justin Leov (pronounced ‘Leo’, Mr Warner) in 10th. Good times. Other notable results saw pro freerider Thomas Vanderham in 43rd, Wyn Masters in 28th and Kieran Bennett in 30th. Full results and overall below. READ MORE
Best trail and best trail name. Five minutes from my house but always in the back of my mind.
So even though Crankworx is all wrapped up for another year and everyone has moved on to new pastures, I’ve just been reunited with my camera which contained my poor attempt at going behind the scenes of the world’s biggest MTB show.
This first photo is of the first trail I showed some of my house guests during a one-hour pre-work power ride. It sort of set the tone for the week. Here’s some more halfwit’s attempt at wit. READ MORE
Where: Velo Espresso – Garden Place, Hamilton
When: Sat 28th Aug 7pm
Cost: $10 – includes movie, coffee & cheesecake
BYO beers/wine – private function
This sweet little premiere is going down the evening prior to the New Zealand Cyclocross Champs in Hamilton; trailer above looks good, details after the jump….. READ MORE
The ever pro-active Tim from T.Whites bikes has a bunch of events coming up, something for everyone methinks (he also does all his own graphic design!)
