Crankworx: Mountain bike bonanza here at last

Wyn Masters on the Crankworx Rotorua Downhill course in the final days before competition opens this week.

It's here.

After months of building excitement that has now reached fever pitch, Crankworx finally starts today at Skyline Rotorua.

Top international riders will be appearing over five days at the inaugural New Zealand edition of the world's largest mountain bike festival.

And organisers insist none of it would have been possible without the passion and hard work of people from "mountain bike-mad" Rotorua.

As final touches were being made to the course yesterday, event director Takurua Mutu spoke of what it meant to bring the event here.

"The only reason I'm doing it is for Rotorua - I can tell you now it's not for the money," he said.

He recalled how, when they first asked Crankworx about holding the festival in Rotorua, the reaction had been underwhelming.

"They said they'd consider it - and then asked, 'where is it?'"

But after flying Crankworx top brass over from Canada to show them around Skyline, it didn't take long to have them convinced.

"By the second day, they just said 'it's got to be here'."

Mutu is confident of the festival's success, largely because of the efforts made by his committed team to make Crankworx Rotorua a reality.

"We have a lot of people in Rotorua dedicated to making this place awesome, it's the culture here," he said.

He said that in other parts of the country "you don't have people with the same kind of passion to make things happen".

"[But] every single person here - even the volunteer who just walked in - they're all huge parts of the machine ... there's no stress for me, because of the team behind it."

Less than a year since his first visit to the Skyline, Crankworx general manager Darren Kinnaird said he was now "extremely excited" for everything to start.

Standing on the slopes of a run overlooking the city, the Canadian said Rotorua was the perfect place for Crankworx, and was full of praise for the city's mountain bike scene.

"It is the passion of the people in this town. After I got back from here 11 months ago I told all our team that the passion for biking in this community is through the charts, and now we are seeing it come to life.

"You see the same interest and love of mountain biking here as you do back home."

By yesterday afternoon, everything looked set for the start of the festival.

The only thing to watch out for would be high winds for the Slopestyle event on Sunday - but for the most part, Mutu wasn't too fussed about the weather forecast.

"It's mountain biking - if it rains, it just gets even gnarlier."