Reunion of the whole team at Whisler EWS and Crankworx
Crankworx is one of the highlights of the year. Whistler bike park and Squamish are great places for a mountain biker. This year we were at whistler with a team of five to shred and share the Pole happiness to the world.
The EWS race
Pole Enduro Race Team was complete again at Whistler after Joe Nation’s unfortunate crash before the Madeira round in May. In short, Leigh Johnson was again at a good speed and is closing the overall TOP 10 of the world ranking of 2019. Joe Nation raced with limited mobility in his arm and he was happy at his performance on the tough Whistler race. Full results here
Conditions
In Whistler, the athletes were racing the longest stage on the EWS circuit. Top Of The World racecourse is roughly 20minute long descent that starts from the peak of Whistler mountain and ends at the Whistler Base. The TOTW was raced in good conditions except for the TOP30 men that had a rain shower in the middle of the top part. We saw some of the racers finishing without goggles and covered in mud. Leigh Johnson was also in this group.
The second race day was a rainy one. The whole Saturday-Sunday night it rained hard. When we started riding, the moisture in the air was overwhelming and it was hard to evaluate how cold it would be in the mountains. The first stage was slippery and wet and almost everything we learned in the practice had to be improvised during the race. After the EWS-100 group had done their riding, the track was full of holes and ruts. Same applied to the rest of the stages. Goggles got steamed and the visibility was limited.
Team manager Matti Lehikoinen was happy about the result even though Leigh was out of the TOP10. It is hard to get to the top in a bike park race where many riders have been riding throughout the years. Local knowledge helps a lot in this race. Our bikes performed well and there was no mechanical issues nor punctures. Our race team is happy about the performance and the new MegaNorris works perfectly. We have zero punctures from this season!
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19th Leigh Johnson
36th Joseph Nation
86th Leo Kokkonen
Riding at Whistler Bikepark in 2019
After the race, our team shreds the bike park to the max. Our favorite was the new Dirt Merchant that had some new features since last year. I guess it’s now complete. The new step down, step up at the first glance was a beast. The size of that feature is crazy compared to what we are used to in Europe. The thing that we can count on though is that Whistler trail crew does not make features that you need to guess how much speed you need to take. You mainly just roll into the stuff and you don’t need to be worried about overjumping the stuff.
