Kona is saying good-bye to a couple long-standing Canadian team members this year. The Bellingham, Wash.-by-way-of-Vancouver brand dropped Caleb Holonko and Cory Wallace.<\/p>\n
That leaves Tayte Proulx-Royds and Hannah Simms representing Canada at Kona alongside Californian Eddie Reynolds.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kona: While The Sun\u2019s Still Here II \u2013 Farewell Holonko<\/p>\n
North Vancouver born and raised, Caleb Holonko\u2019s been with Kona since 2016. He leaves the brand just shy of the 10-year mark, but after more than making his mark on the freeride scene, locally and globally. Through Lights Out and its sequel or\u00a0In the Know<\/a>\u00a0along with many other video projects, Holonko helped carry the torch freeride on the North Shore.<\/p>\n Through leading Kona\u2019s re-build of Boogie Nights, he helped bring that spirit out of the Shore\u2019s \u201cDark Side\u201d and into the official network with a fast line full of new-school flow and style. That is just a small slice of what Holonko accomplished over nine years with Kona, of course. But many riders around the world still have his no-hander off the Toonie Drop etched into their brains. Or him back flipping Pemberton\u2019s train gap<\/a>. Or\u2026 well, there\u2019s a lot of moments, to be honest. Many so iconic they were immortalized in lego<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the 16-year-old kid who stopped us in our tracks to the grown-up professional super sender\u2026 you\u2019ll always be the Kona superfan rocking the mullet wig to us,\u201d Kona said in releasing Holonko\u2019s farewell edit. \u201cWe\u2019re grateful for every lap, every laugh, every \u2018What the hell did we just witness?’\u201d<\/p>\n Cory Wallace rides off into the mountains more solo than usual<\/p>\n Cory Wallace has been with Kona almost as long as some of his teammates have been alive. Along the way, he\u2019s picked up six WEMBO 24 Hour world championship titles, numerous wild and remote FKTs, many in Nepal, won BC Bike Race and a pair of marathon national titles. That\u2019s on top of the countless race wins and podiums both close to home and in the farthest-flung corners of the mountian bike world.<\/p>\n Most recently, Wallace won the 300-km Northeast MTB Challenge in India (more on that very soon), which bills itself as the world\u2019s hardest one-day mountain bike race.<\/p>\n While that may have been Wallace\u2019s last race for Kona (the brand dropped him once before, briefly) the Jasper, Alta.-born endurance racer is far from done. He\u2019s currently documenting a monumental route traversing the middle reaches of Nepal, from one side of the country to the other. With plenty more planned for 2026, we\u2019re excited to see where Wallace ends up next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kona is saying good-bye to a couple long-standing Canadian team members this year. The Bellingham, Wash.-by-way-of-Vancouver brand dropped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,218638,218639,784,218640,43062,117138,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-413533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-caleb-holonko","11":"tag-cory-wallace","12":"tag-cycling","13":"tag-kona","14":"tag-mtb-features","15":"tag-mtb-news","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}