decline magazine Crankworx 2013 : Page 30

<sport focus> Dirty Minds Think Alike When the Ultimate Pump Track Challenge made its 2010 Crankworx debut, it injected a little BMX ﬂavour into the ultimate festival of freeride. Suddenly, professional slopestyle or downhill mountain bike athletes were dueling on a 20-25 second long course, where victory was based on mastery of traditional BMX skill sets : pumping, cornering, doubling, and manualling. THE PUMP BEHIND THE PUMP TRACK – by Sarah Leishman Whistler Mountain Bike Park Manager, Brian Finestone, was one of the key advocates for creating the Pump Track Challenge back in 2010. “Once riders get the sensation of ﬂow-ing over rollers and berms they ‘get it’. Once you get it, you want more of it.” Jeremy Roche was the General Manager of the Crankworx festival from 2006-2010 and shared Finestone’s dream of bringing the Ultimate Pump Track Challenge to the Crank-worx roster, despite the risk. It was, for the most part, an unproven racing concept. But the Crankworx team saw potential in an event that was both spectator-friendly and unique to mountain biking. “This was going to be one of the ﬁrst cross-disciplinary events,” says Roche, “with the world’s best slopestyle athletes and top downhillers in a competitive environment.” Pump tracks had been a mainstay of Whis-tler’s grassroots mountain bike scene for years. “Pump tracks take mountain biking and turn it into a session sport,” says Finestone. “It is much more social. People of different riding abilities can all ride the same track and watch each other’s lines and technique.” He’d drawn inspiration from the local scene: “I watched As seasoned riders know, a pump track is only as good as the crew that builds and designs it. For the Ultimate Pump Track Chal-lenge, Adam Billinghurst, Andrew “Gunner” Gunn and Kenny Smith are that crew. All three cut their teeth as members of the Whistler Mountain Bike trail crew, and tally a collective 35 years trail and pump track build-ing experience. “I want to build things that ﬂow well and help people have fun riding,” says Billinghurst, one of the sports’ premiere pump track techni-cians, as evidenced by his segment in Anthill Films’ 2012 Strength in Numbers. Riding, building and coaching have been his way of life since 1998. Known for coining and deﬁning the term “hane”, Kenny Smith, or “The Ken”, has built for and competed at the Red Bull Rampage and spends his summer days planning, dig-ging and riding lines that most mortals would never imagine walking down. and learned from the Chromag Crew in Em-erald and the Alta Vista Crew. Seeing Gunner and Adam design, build and rip their creations motivated me to build my own track.” CRANKWORX WHISTLER | 30 | OFFICIAL PROGRAM GUIDE 2013

Dirty Minds Think Alike

Sarah Leishman

When the Ultimate Pump Track Challenge made its 2010 Crankworx debut, it injected a little BMX flavour into the ultimate festival of free ride. Suddenly, professional slope style or downhill mountain bike athletes were dueling on a 20-25 second long course, where victory was based on mastery of traditional BMX skill sets : pumping, cornering, doubling, and manualling. THE PUMP BEHIND THE PUMP TRACK Whistler Mountain Bike Park Manager, Brian Finestone, was one of the key advocates for creating the Pump Track Challenge back in 2010. “Once riders get the sensation of flowing over rollers and berms they ‘get it’. Once you get it, you want more of it.” Jeremy Roche was the General Manager of the Crankworx festival from 2006-2010 and shared Finestone’s dream of bringing the Ultimate Pump Track Challenge to the Crankworx roster, despite the risk. It was, for the most part, an unproven racing concept. But the Crankworx team saw potential in an event that was both spectator-friendly and unique to mountain biking. “This was going to be one of the first cross-disciplinary events,” says Roche, “with the world’s best slope style athletes and top downhillers in a competitive environment.” Pump tracks had been a mainstay of Whistler’s grassroots mountain bike scene for years. “Pump tracks take mountain biking and turn it into a session sport,” says Fine stone. “It is much more social. People of different riding abilities can all ride the same track and watch each other’s lines and technique.” He’d drawn inspiration from the local scene: “I watched and learned from the Chromag Crew in Emerald and the Alta Vista Crew. Seeing Gunner and Adam design, build and rip their creations motivated me to build my own track.” As seasoned riders know, a pump track is only as good as the crew that builds and designs it. For the Ultimate Pump Track Challenge, Adam Billinghurst, Andrew “Gunner” Gunn and Kenny Smith are that crew. All three cut their teeth as members of the Whistler Mountain Bike trail crew, and tally a collective 35 years trail and pump track building experience. “I want to build things that flow well and help people have fun riding,” says Billing hurst, one of the sports’ premiere pump track technicians, as evidenced by his segment in Anthill Films’ 2012 Strength in Numbers. Riding, building and coaching have been his way of life since 1998. Known for coining and defining the term “hane”, Kenny Smith, or “The Ken”, has built for and competed at the Red Bull Rampage and spends his summer days planning, digging and riding lines that most mortals would never imagine walking down. Gunner is the builder who lent his painstaking attention to detail for sculpting berms and roller features to the design and construction of the 2006-2009 Dual Slalom tracks at Crankworx. From 2006-2009, as the Trail Crew’s Lead Hand, Gunner’s pet project was the design and build of Ninja Cougar – a Whistler Mountain Bike Park blue trail that salvaged a piece of otherwise useless land, turning it into the ‘trail of their dreams’ – a pump track for downhill bikes, beloved for its tight corners, and armored, high-speed whoop features throughout. The dynamic of three dedicated trail builders who absolutely shred on bikes and live, sleep and breathe bike trails are what have made the Ultimate Pump Track Challenge venue what it is today. Building a world class race track should take a 3-man crew weeks – if not months – to perfect. The Ultimate Pump Track is built each year right before the event and is removed right after Crankworx ends - after all, it lives in Whistler Village’s Celebration Plaza, which, while the ideal spectator location, is not exactly the centre of riding in town. The days constructing the track are incredibly long and seem to always be in the blazing sun; the boys all have additional obligations during Crankworx to sponsors or as coaches or at races…and the show still goes on. While the threesome have a tendency to (at times) communicate with each other like a group of 8 year old boys in a sandbox, they have a mutual understanding of how important it is to get the track built and designed exactly right. Building a track that harnesses and showcases the skills of the best athletes in the world and keeps people stoked through an amazing spectator event are their ultimate goals. What makes the Ultimate Pump Track Challenge so unique is this essential mix: the free ride talents and World Cup fierceness of the competing athletes and the passion of three building ninjas consumed by constructing a masterpiece in only days. Complete the equation with fans who love to watch athletic brilliance in action and you have quite the concoction - something the minds behind the Ultimate Pump Track Challenge originally identified as worth gambling on. The Wild Card idea was that a grassroots community could be empowered to build a place to ride for everyone. “My vision for the future of pump tracks is to have one in every town across Canada,” says Fine stone. “In every place you see skate parks, baseball diamonds and tennis courts, you should see pump tracks. They are the feeders to the sport of mountain biking and the key to longevity of the sport.”

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