Whistler 2010 Crankworx VW Trick Showdown

The past week here in Whistler has been very busy with the excitement of 2010 Kokanee Crankworx bike show. I finally had a chance to get out and shoot one of the events in between working.

I was able to get up into the Whistler Bike Park Bone yard and shoot the 2010 Crankworx VW Trick Showdown.

The riders where dropping in half way down the slope-style course, hitting a step up to flat box with a drop at the end, into a quarter pipe with 2 flat banks on each side. After the second feature they where back into another step up jump into a flat bridge with a pretty big drop off at the end.

All of this was a warm up for the trick jump at the end where everyone was throwing down all their best tricks to please the crowd and win cash.

The VW Trick showdown announcers had a wad  of cash ($1000 in 50 dollar bills) to hand to the riders who landed a trick that got the crowd excited.

Greg Watts won the first round with a Back flip double whip bringing home $3000 in cash and he probably won some cash from the announcers when he was pulling tricks throwout the half hour session on the first half of the course.

The second round was at the base of Whistler and it was a much larger jump compared to the first one that the riders where hitting. The gap was about 35 feet from lip to landing, but most riders would land about 5-10 feet down the transition. Making the gap even bigger.

A lot of the riders didn’t seem to be riding on the second session (not as many as the first session) mostly due to the fact that most of them didn’t want to hurt themselves before the grand finale on Saturday.

The Monster Energy Slope Style is one of the bigger events at the Kokanee Crankworx event every year, so we only saw the top dogs it the jump once or twice.

On the other hand Darren Berrecloth was out there riding harder than most doing several different tricks on the jump. But his last trick was the game winning jump.

Berrecloth brought a new trick to the last jump, one that he doesn’t pull out of his bag of tricks too often. He his the jump doing a switch 360, and it got the crowd on their toes. Since he was spinning switch it wasn’t as easy as you would see him do it regular on the jump during the first session.

Hi first switch 360 was a big scary to watch and didn’t look like he was going to land it, but some how he stuck the landing and rode to the bottom with the crowd in applause. Once he landed the switch 360 he ran up to his photographer Sterling Lawrence and told him to get to the top of the jump cause he was going to do it again.

No one knew what he was going to do, but you could tell from Darren’s excitement when he was running back to the top of the jump that it was going to be a good jump.

Once Darren got to the top of the slope, he took a quick minute to collect himself and then dropped into the jump. Darren hit the 35 foot jump doing a Switch 360 lookback which was amazing to watch and took home First place in the Feature 2 category.

The crowd was huge and the excitement was amazing. If you can ever make it to Whistler, make sure you check out the Crankworx event which happens every August on Whistler Mountain.