McGarry’s Crankworx Red Bull Joyride Summary

Kelly McGarry had an unfortunate crash during the 2011 Crankworx Red Bull Joyride Slopestyle contest. Read his entry below to get the low-down on his experience this year.

Yo bros, well Crankworx 2011 and Red Bull Joyride has come to an end and all in all it was a wild time! Crankworx was nice enough to put myself and 15year old ripper Anthony Messere up in the Hilton in Whistler which was sweeeeet! We got up to plenty of no good hangin out there for 7 nights hahaha!

Crankworx was hectic… bigger than I have ever seen it before… I get so psyched catchin up with everybody and seeing all the radical riding go down over the week.

The Joy Ride Course was constructed by a different team this year (Patty K and crew) and it came out a fair bit different than previous years. The course was more snowboard style this year with hips and spine landings all over the show which made for some awesome tech riding. The only thing I could say about the course was WAY TOO MUCH SPEED FOR EVERY THING!!! Yep …you had to brake super hard for every jump on the course to avoid missing the landing ramp completely!!

This proved to be challenging sometimes with a few riders getting knocked out of the comp early due to over shooting the landings of the jumps! I was lucky enough to be pre qualified for the 16man final thanks to my 5th place finish last year, so when Saturday rolled around It was go time for McGazza!

I showed up for the 2 hour pracco session and ran into trouble 2nd run in when I was contemplating spining off the first drop. I went way to slow setting up and cased hard bending my forks!!! I raced down to see the good blokes at Marzocchi and they hooked my butt up with another set of forks! Cheers Mates! Then it was back into pracco… I spun the first drop… landed and my deraileur went into my spokes!! It doesn’t rain, it pours!

Thanks to Porter and Brian from Gravity, we got my bike up and running for the final. I was dropping 3rd to last so I watched some frickin insane stuff go down in front of me with a masssssssive crowd cheering everyone on!! SO rad! Finaly my run came around… I was pretty dam nervous (as usual!!) I dropped in and stomped my 360 down the 1st drop and sent it down the course feeling good… I came into the second jump a 35ft left hip, I braked to what I thought was about the right speed to flip table it… I lofted it and it was working out well but I just tagged the landing when I came around and went down in a ball of dust and rocks, DAMN!! Too much brake!

My shoulder hurt and I knew I had broken my collar bone. Bummed as I had nailed the trick a bunch of times in practice. I sat back in a pile of broken bones and watched the rest of the madness go down. What an insane comp! I am so stoked on slopestyle!! It’s the gnarliest sport and is so exciting to watch!!! Anyways that’s about it from my end…. now I’m set up on the couch for the next month healing up… It sucks but it’s all part of the game right. At least I have some good mates to hang with while I’m down and out! Cheers guys! – McGazza

Crankworx Teva Best Trick

Here are two photos of Kelly McGarry shot during the Crankworx Teva Best Trick contest. Photos via Harookz.

Kelly is currently recovering from a broken collar bone injury. All of us here at Gravity wish him a speedy recovery! Heal up quick bru!

Kelly McGarry takes flight…

McGarry banked on some airmiles… but this time not on a bike! Read below to find out more.

“I have been busy as heck… traveling around. Check out the rock climb up a water fall to paraglide down we did just before I left Switzerland…so rad! Thanks to Matt for making me go and do some radical wing overs on the way down GEE FORCE!!! I love traveling and having cool experiences like this as well shredding BIKES – McGazza”