Image Credit: CFJC Today / Kent Simmonds

By Jill Sperling

Crankworx Summer Series

Mountain biking event showcases Sun Peaks to global audience

Aug 14, 2020 | 4:35 PM

SUN PEAKS, B.C. — Sun Peaks has had to make do without international tourists this summer. While businesses in the community are making ends meet with the help of regional tourists, the resort is hoping to win back international markets when the pandemic is over.

One event that could help is the CLIF Crankworx Summer Series. The world-class mountain biking event wrapped up in Sun Peaks today (Aug. 14). Unlike previous Crankworx events, spectators were discouraged from attending.

“Annually in Whistler we see about 135,000 people visit Crankworx in Whistler each year, we have about 35,000 people that would turn out for Red Bull Joyride, the big slopestyle event, and yeah, it’s different this year,” said Darren Kinnaird, managing director of Crankworx.

Without the options of large gatherings or international travel, Crankworx pivoted to a made-for-TV race event with 25 B.C. invited athletes.

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“We knew that we might have an opportunity to showcase our athletes, this beautiful province we live in at a time when not many places in the world could pull this off,” Kinnaird said.

For riders like Casey Brown, the event was an opportunity to not only ride competitively, but to ride the trails B.C. has to offer.

“We went to Silver Star and we went to Kicking Horse, and Silver Star was really mellow and cruisy, a nice warm-up, and Kicking Horse was crazy steep and rocky, and this is a really nice combination of the two,” Brown said. “I think it’s the perfect place to finish up an event like this.”

The event has a global audience and those tuning in also get to catch a glimpse of what Sun Peaks has to offer.

“All that does is boost things for us on a global perspective,” said Sun Peaks Resort Chief Marketing Officer Aidan Kelly. “All around the world there’s people from different countries everywhere that have been tuning in and have been following along with the story in the news and it’s great for us to host the finale week of this.”

The resort has not seen the same amount of visitors this summer as it normally would, but a steady flow of regional tourists has been keeping businesses, like Tod Mountain Cafe, afloat.

“I actually went back home for a couple of months, back to England, and then when I came back it was super dead, there was no one here,” said barista Matt Williams. “As soon as I get back into the cafe and the weather started improving, we just found an influx of people from Vancouver and Kelowna and stuff like that were flocking in and it got super super busy for a few weeks.”

Williams says the crowds are already beginning to die down as the mountain biking season winds down. It remains to be seen what will happen to the winter season, but Kelly says the resort has learned a lot from the summer.

“We had tons of protocols in place from day one and we’ve managed this very, very closely and very well,” Kelly said. “So if we take all of those learnings from summer and we pump it into winter, then we look forward to a successful winter season, albeit with a lot fewer or no international visitors that we would normally get, but that regional market, I think they’re kind of chomping at the bit to get back on skis this winter.”