STOP ONE: Crankworx Rotorua brings nine jam-packed days of gravity-mountain biking to the Southern Hemisphere for March and April 2017. The first stop of the Crankworx World Tour, the festival is staged in the Skyline Rotorua Gravity Park and the Whakarewarewa Forest trail network, with events spilling out all over the city. It launches all four Crankworx Series competitions, brings the riders out to play for the first whip-off of the season, and establishes the only rider capable of winning the Triple Crown of Slopestyle in a given year. With a full complement of Kidsworx events, concerts and its own showcase of the sport’s creative side, Rotorua is the place to experience how the Kiwis revel in the cult of the fat tire.

STOP THREE: If there was an epicenter for aerial tricks, Innsbruck would be the place. Home to snow’s famous Air and Style Contest, since 1993, Innsbruck’s relationship with gravity goes far beyond a dalliance, inching more toward obsession. On the peaks above this venerable city, rock climbers gather for World Cups, Olympians charge to victory, and ski jumpers converge for the annual Four Hills Tournament. This is the land of daring and decisiveness. Make room for Crankworx Innsbruck and its bold, German-speaking flare.

STOP TWO: Heading back to France for its sixth year, Crankworx Les Gets stakes a claim for mountain biking in France, the global centre of all things biking. This is where the aeronautic tricksters and unflinching speed demons will converge each June to session the verdant alpine slopes of the Alps. Les Gets is a pioneer for this sport. It was among the first in Europe to offer lift-accessed mountain biking, and is integral to the early days of downhill racing with four UCI World Cups and the 2004 World Championship to its name. Nestled on the French-Swiss border, and part of the 12-resort Porte du Soleil mountain-riding circuit, this is ground zero for Europe’s gravity obsessed.

THE CORONATION: Whistler is where it all began, where careers take flight and where the season culminates in a raucous showdown of gravity-mountain biking’s finest riding. The festival is staged in the number one lift-accessed mountain bike park in the world, the Whistler Mountain Bike Park, and surrounding Whistler Valley. The area’s craggy cliffs and root-riddled rain forest are Mecca for downhill and North Shore-style riding, offering up 4,900 vertical-feet of bold, brash terrain to fuel 10 days of boundary-defining riding each August. From fans cresting the Top of the World to seasoned Slopestyle athletes battling in the Boneyard, Crankworx Whistler merges every rider’s talent, creativity and power to form the ultimate riding scene. And as the home of the Crankworx World Tour, it is where the toughest and most exclusive titles in the sport are awarded: the King and Queen of the Crankworx World Tour and the Triple Crown of Slopestyle.