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
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
Chris Van Dine, Eric Porter, Kelly McGarry and Harookz bounced out of Whistler immediately after Crankworx and headed north for Alaska. A state renowned for its big mountain snow lines, these three guys are looking for the MTB version of that and judging by the Gravity Twitter posts they are finding gold… and a little bit of rain. READ MORE
It’s so totally not exclusive that it’s not even here. While the rest of the world’s MTB media were being given the release of Shimano’s new XTR (even the Aussies got to go), Spoke was left watching Battlestar Galactica re-runs. So if you have been sleeping under a rock (like us) head over to Bike Mag for their rundown on all things that begin with X.
The folks at Sportspro sent this bike cleaner down yesterday and it couldn’t have been better timed. When I left for Europe over a month ago, my bike was covered in mud. I thought that maybe on my return one of my kids might have cleaned Dad’s bike, but that didn’t happen. So yesterday I gave the Motomuck a crack. You just spray it on (lots of it) to the dirty dry bike. Let it sit for ten minutes and then spray it off. Done. Did it work? Well the mud on my bike was really caked on, I knocked a few big chunks off with a stick before spraying the Motomuck on, but seriously I’d say 99% of the mud just fell off when I sprayed it with the hose. So damn simple. It’s New Zealand made and is currently undergoing a little bit of rebranding but you should see this stuff in bike stores soon. A two litre container will be $19.95 and a 500ml squirter bottle will be $9.95. READ MORE
Ground Effect is trying to reignite the long-dead flame of the sport of Lawn Darts (basically giant darts). The sport was banned in the US when a Lawn Dart killed a small child (it impaled her in the head). Anyway with Ground Effect’s latest TT2 tee, designed by ex-Spoke designer Emma Gee, Lawn Darts are back, although they are now on bikes and wear helmets and are in fact human Lawn Darts. In the same package that contained these tees was a revised version of the classic Toe Rag sock; I’m wearing them right now actually. They fit super snug, and feature new graphics as well as a tighter fit. Oh and how awesome is this, I can’t even tell you when they are coming out, ’cause I have no idea. Just keep your eyes on the Ground Effect website. READ MORE
Chris Van Dine, Eric Porter, Kelly McGarry and Harookz bounced out of Whistler immediately after Crankworx and headed north for Alaska. A state renowned for its big mountain snow lines, these three guys are looking for the MTB version of that and judging by the Gravity Twitter posts they are finding gold… and a little bit of rain. 
