Whistler’s Crankworx mountain biking festival makes connections around the world with a diverse global community.
Along with celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, the festival will be hosting its 10th Dirt Diaries, a video competition, and the Deep Summer Photo Challenge this August, offering a creative window into the world of mountain biking.
North Vancouver’s Micayla Gatto, a former competitive mountain bike rider, took home the $5,000 Dirt Diaries top prize last year with her video , a parody of rapper Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” which dealt with the sexist circumstances that women experience in the biking community.
“The song itself is a direct reflection of my life growing up as a female in this sport, in kind of like a tongue and cheek fashion,” says Gatto.
Gatto created the rap video with Vancouver-based production company IFHT Films. The result, which was uploaded to IFHT’s YouTube channel, has more than 800,000 views and became a viral hit with the hashtag #ferdagirls popping up all over the internet.
Gatto says the context and humour of the video received some negative backlash but for the most part, the video was received very well by both men and women in the biking community.
“I wanted to make sure that people understood the comedy of it and the sarcasm of it but it does say a lot of true things,” Gatto says. “Me and my girlfriends who ride and other pro women, everything I said in the song are discussions and things we’ve talked about amongst ourselves for years.”
She says the YouTube video got a lot of negative feedback, with people stating the video is “feminist propaganda” and others telling her to “go back to the kitchen.”
“I guess whenever you create something that has a voice, you’re bound to get a little bit of that polarizing effect,” she says. “My big goal is to normalize women in sports. It bugs me so much that the stereotype still exists, that (mountain biking) is a boy’s sport.”
Heading into this season Gatto is working as the main field reporter for the Crankworx World Tour and is travelling to New Zealand, Innsbruck, Austria and France before coming home to the Whistler fest in August.
North Vancouver’s Graeme Meiklejohn is one of six filmmakers competing in this year’s Dirt Diaries contest. - Supplied, Lou Currie
This is the first year that six filmmakers were chosen before six athletes. In the past the Dirt Diaries selected the riders first, who then choose the filmmakers they wanted to work with.
Each videographer competing will name an athlete they’ll document, with each athlete in turn providing an answer as to what makes their story worth covering.
“Video is so dominant in the mountain bike world at the moment, and the progression is pretty staggering year-over-year. We wanted the competition to reflect that,” says Crankworx spokesperson Julia Montague in an email.
Graeme Meiklejohn, who grew up in Pemberton Heights but is now based in Whistler, has been selected as one of the six filmmakers competing in this year’s Dirt Diaries. He will be documenting downhill racer Matt Beer, along with Quinn Lanzon who is co-writing the script.
Shooting started last Friday on a dark comedy that showcases a lot of fast riding from Beer through the Sea to Sky landscape.
 “The message that we are going to get across for our video is the distillation of the true love that riders have for the bike park,” he says. “It’s a very iconic Whistler story.”
Meiklejohn and Gatto both agree that the best part about Crankworx is how it brings together the different disciplines of the biking community into one festival and having it at Whistler is a bonus.
“You don’t get that at any other mountain biking event,” Gatto says. “I’ve ridden my bike all over the world and there’s some of the best mountain biking in the world right in our backyard.”
The festival will run from Aug. 10-19 with the Dirt Diaries films screening on Aug. 14.
