Leogang and Winterberg - E.T.

Guten Tag!

It’s been a week since Maribor and I have a lot to write about!

After Maribor I happened to bump into the Yeti Factory Team while out for dinner and they suggested that I go to Leogang, Austria with them. For those that don’t know, Leogang is the new site of the 3rd World Cup round coming up in June. I decided to go with them to check out the area and better prepare myself for the upcoming world cup.

The terrain driving through Austria is breathtaking! MASSIVE snow capped mountains, tiny villages connected by winding roads, and ski lifts just about everywhere you could possibly imagine.



Once in Leogang, we spent the next couple days relaxing, shopping, doing laundry, working on bikes, and eventually getting to ride the bike park. The park was only partially open due to large quantities of snow remaining on the upper half of the mountain. Despite the closure, we still found and rode what should be the World Cup downhill track.

The track is fun, but different. It is a mixture of bike park (think A-Line in Whistler) and rooty woods sections (think Original Sin in Whistler). It will be interesting to see who does well on this course as it does not suit any particular rider.




After the brief stay in Leogang I drove the 8+ hours to Winterberg, Germany for the IXS Cup race. Man the Autobahn makes driving long distances much more enjoyable!

I managed to find the on site camping and meet up with my German friend and travel coordinator, Moritz. Once camp was set up (as in parking my van) I could already tell that this was going to be an awesome event…The campground was alive with energy. LOUD music, mini-motos, blow-up dolls, mega phones, fireworks, and lots and lots of beer!

Moritz and friends cooked dinner and we relaxed and watched the madness un-fold around us. Luckily the music was shut down around 12:00 at night so we were able to get some good sleep in preparation for tomorrows practice.

Winterberg is a unique event. Amatuers and pros practice on the same course at the same time making it an all out battle for a clear course. I have never seen so many people riding a course at once! It was like a constant stream!




The course here is pretty fun. It starts off with a big start ramp followed by some jumps and pedaling leading you into the woods. Fairly rooty and technical woods sections flow well from one to the next ending in a fast finish line sprint broken up by some jumps.

In total the course is roughly 2 minutes and the lift line is unfortunately 30 minutes. This made for lots and lots of hiking sections as I did not want to hit up the lift too often. Luckily the weather was amazing for the first time this trip. No rain, warm temps, and great dirt. It reminded me of Whistler except everybody spoke German.

After practice I decided to hit up the campground’s showers and was pleasantly surprised that they actually had hot water and were quite nice. Not bad for 15 euros for the entire 4 nights! After cooking up another good meal and again watching the madness unfold around us it was time for bed.

The next morning was early practice followed by a seeding run. I had a good run and qualified in 15th position with a time of 1:55.608 with the #1 qualifier (Aaron Gwin) on a 1:51.247.

After the qualifier we all hit up the showers, had a bit of a barbecue, and headed over to the 4-cross track to watch the racing under the lights.



Jared Graves won convincingly, hole-shotting every heat all the way through the final round. My personal comentator/mechanic/drunken German friend, Lukas was telling me bits of information about every rider as they went by which was cool to know. Racing was over by 12:00 at night and the live music was well under way by then. We stayed up for an hour or so more, but decided it would be good to catch some sleep since we again had an early morning ahead.

The day of the race was crazy! So many people flooded the pits and the course it put the World Cup’s to shame! Not only was there the downhill finals, but a huge slope style event as well.

My race run was strange. I knew the course would be even better come the race so I just tried to pin it. No sense in feeling like you went too slow. It seemed as if I was hitting some sections of the course much faster than I had in practice, but I had no real way of knowing. I gave it all I had and crossed the finish line, but not into the hot seat. I thought I heard the announcer say ninth position with my poor German translation which was disappointing. With 14 faster riders left to go this would mean that I would probably end up outside the top 20. I wasn't very happy with this.

After the conclusion of the race we packed up and headed to Moritz’s parents house in Ober-Morlen roughly 1.5 hours away still not knowing the race results.

Once in Ober-Morlen I was greeted by Moritz’s parents Joerg and Monika (George and Monica) and they made me feel right at home. We unpacked from the trip and Monika congratulated me on my 10th place finish. WHAT!!! I didn’t believe her until she showed me in the results page online. Apparently my German is terrible and I had actually gone over 3 seconds faster in my race run and pulled out a top 10 result only a half second off of podium! With over 150 pro racers and a bunch of FAST World Cup guys competing I was pretty happy!




We finished off the day with a killer German style barbeque thanks to Joerg and I slept well knowing that I’m not just over here wasting my time and money.

I will be here until Wednesday morning when I will leave for the long 16+ hour drive to Scotland. I think I will be breaking it up into two parts with a stay in London Wednesday night. Should be pretty cool. Not so sure about driving on the other side of the road though…

Next up is the IXS Cup race in Innerleithen, Scotland this weekend followed by the World Cup in Fort William. I look forward to gaining more speed and experience racing against some of the best in the world at these races. Check back often for updates on the site.

Prost! (Cheers!),

Evan