The first major gravity showdown of the season is underway in New Zealand as Crankworx Rotorua rolls into the Skyline bike park this weekend.<\/p>\n
Two\u00a0 finals will be broadcast live: the Specialized K\u0101rearea Downhill Finals on Saturday and the Crankworx Slopestyle in Memory of McGazza on Sunday, the second stop of the Slopestyle Super League.<\/p>\n
There will be a handful of Canadians worth keeping an eye on.<\/p>\n
Downhill finals set after seeding runs<\/p>\n
Seeding runs for the Specialized K\u0101rearea Downhill were held Thursday on the Rotorua track.<\/p>\n
Local NZ rider Luke Meier-Smith set the fastest men\u2019s time with a 2:55.659, edging out Canadian Dane Jewett, who finished just 0.7 seconds back to claim the second seed heading into Saturday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n
American Richie Rude rounded out the top three in seeding.<\/p>\n
On the women\u2019s side, defending champion Jenna Hastings topped seeding and will drop last in the final. The only Canadian to race was Emmy Lan.<\/p>\n
Canadians to watch in downhill<\/p>\n
The Rotorua downhill start list includes a healthy group of Canadian riders.<\/p>\n
Among the most notable is Dane Jewett, who got the second-fastest seeding time.<\/p>\n
Other Canadians in the field include: Tegan Cruz, Michael Delesalle, Tristan Lemire, Xavier Letendre, Jake Polito and Nathan Sterckx.<\/p>\n
Slopestyle: three Canadians in the mix<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s Slopestyle final will bring together some of the biggest names in freestyle mountain biking. The Canadian contingent is led by three riders.<\/p>\n
Jaden Chipman is the Joyride 150<\/a> regular and rising contest rider. He had some troubles with a hip in Christchurch, but is definitely looking for redemption.\u00a0 Chance Moore<\/a> placed fourth in Christchurch and is definitely eyeing up a podium spot. And Griffin Paulson who placed eighth in Christchurch.<\/p>\n They\u2019ll face a stacked international field including Nicholi Rogatkin, David Godziek and Erik Fedko.<\/p>\n How to watch in Canada<\/p>\n The trickiest part about watching Crankworx live in Canada is timing. But here\u2019s the cheat code:<\/p>\n The Specialized K\u0101rearea Downhill Finals take place March 13th at 11 PM EDT.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Crankworx Slopestyle in Memory of McGazza take place March 14th at 5 PM EDT.<\/p>\n The links to both live feeds are below:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first major gravity showdown of the season is underway in New Zealand as Crankworx Rotorua rolls into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,1700,82],"class_list":["post-533537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-mtb-features","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}