Volunteering at Crankworx Rotorua 2021

Crankworx is a world tour of mountain bike races and one of the stops is the town Rotorua in New Zealand. Normally, if you want to come to watch the races, you have to buy a ticket and also get here in the first place. When we decided to go about 10 days before the race, the tickets were already sold out.

Fortunately, I noticed the possibility to participate as a volunteer on the event’s Facebook page, so we didn’t hesitate, filled in some personal information and hoped. Next day, we received an email saying that we were being hired and that we had to choose how many days we wanted to „work“ and which positions would suit us the most. The whole event is for four days and we wanted to participate in the first three days and especially to have the afternoon off on the third day, because there was a final in the Slop-Style discipline – main reason why you going to this event.

We both chose the morning shifts and I chose the Slope-Style track Marshall position. My task was to oversee to safety on the track  sections, so that if something went wrong with one of the riders, I immediately reported it on the radio and stopped the track. Niki controlled and let people into the area of the event.

As the date of the event approached, the situation with Covid started to worsen and the government started to introduce stricter restrictions. Since events of this type and public participation of more than 100 people were about to be banned, the organizers decided a few days before the start to refund the entrance fee and not allow the public into the area. The atmosphere of the race was significantly lacking, but we won it, because they still needed volunteers. So we packed up, threw the mattress in the car and set off.

On the very first day, you could see how the whole event was professionally organised. In the morning, we received everything we needed, including a snack and instructions on what would happen next. Always after the shift, or sometimes even during it, I took the camera and tried to capture the riders. There were a lot of opportunities and some nice photos were taken.

Whether training or the final, it was an incredible spectacle and a great experience. We saw a little behind the scenes of the organization, and thanks to the low participation, we got close to the world riders.

You can play the entire recording here.