Red Bull Crashed Ice track promises to be longer, faster than 2015
The track is longer, the jumps are bigger and the beer gardens will flow more freely as the Ice Cross Downhill World Championship, a.k.a. Red Bull Crashed Ice, returns to Edmonton.
“I think it’s going to be a huge success again,” Patrice Drouin, president of Gestev Inc. — the company producing the event — said Wednesday.
He was confident the experience, from both the perspective of the public and the athletes, will be better than in 2015, which drew 70,000 spectators.
Nearly 150 workers have spent weeks building the 455-metre ice track, stretching from the top of Grierson Hill Road and winding through Louise McKinney Riverfront Park.
“I think it’s going to be fast and a lot of air time,” said Drouin.
The Red Bull Crashed Ice track is seen under-construction Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2018. Shaughn Butts/ Postmedia
SHAUGHN BUTTS / POSTMEDIA
The track boasts a vertical drop of 40 metres from start to finish, with a number of challenging obstacles designed to knock riders off their skates.
After launching from the starting gate and landing the first 1-1/2-metre drop — with racers expected to reach speeds in excess of 60 km/h in the first half — skaters will hit the Canadian Big Air, a jump engineered to break the world record for the longest jump on skates, previously set at 27 metres by Tory Merz in 2016.
Athletes will then have to put on the brakes going into a 180-degree turn designed to steal all of the speed and momentum built up after landing the jump, to force athletes to battle back for speed and position.
“It cuts the race in two, making the racing more attractive, more dynamic,” Drouin said.
