All four Slovenians made it into the superfinal in iXS Euro DH Cup race in Germany, victories to Bartova and Fischbach.
After Kranjska Gora the iXS European Downhill Cup continued in Willingen, Germany, during the Bike festival which also includes marathon, enduro and a number of other events.
The former World Cup venue saw the victories of the reigning European Champion Jana Bartova (Cze, RRP) and last year’s series winner Johannes Fischbach (Ger, Radon Magura Factory), also the winner in Kranjska Gora. Slovenian riders had a good race with 6th places for Monika Hrastnik (Blackthorn) in women’s final and Jure Žabjek (Unior Tools Team) in men’s superfinal.
All four Slovenian elite riders made it into the superfinal of the top 30: besides the protected three Žabjek, Žiga Pandur (UTT) and Miran Vauh (Blackthorn) the other Blacthorn guy Vid Kovač also experienced his first superfinal.
In the superfinal Pandur finished 10th, Vauh 17th and Kovač 23rd.
Špela Horvat (Supersnurf) was the other Slovenian in women’s race, she finished 12th.
After 5th place in Kranjska Gora Jure is now 4th overall, Žiga is 7th and Miri 14th. Monika who was 3rd is Kranjska Gora is also holding 4th, the injured Zarja Černilogar is 11th and Špela is 12th.
Quotes from the fastest Slovenians
Monika: “The course here is very different from the one in Kranjska Gora, it has many jumps and I would have needed some weights to keep the speed in top part. It was dry on Friday and Saturday until the qualifications, then it started raining during the qualis but I still had a good run until the meadow where it was really slippery. I didn’t have the confidence in the wet on Sunday and I did a number of smaller mistakes which affected my time.”
Jure: “The weather was changing. I had a good top part in wet qualification run but I crashed in the meadow and had a bad result. It dried for the superfinal and it was much faster then. I did one small mistake, missed a line, ran into soft terrain and lost the speed. I am happy with my result and I know I can do to well in the next World Cup race.”
The next race will be from June 17th to 19th in Schladming.
Jure Žabjek in top photo. All photos by Thomas Dietze/extreme-pics
