Downhill European Championships 2006 - Insul - Germany

17./18. June 2006

Friday noon. Aki got lost on the way from Zürich to Olten. He's coming directly to Liestal. Frank and Stefan have to take the train from Olten to Liestal. Half an hour later Aki's mummy's Volvo is fully packed. We're off to Insul. On the german autobahn we meet Jan. We continued the journey together. Two navigators - nevertheless we got lost. We had to ask a few people to get the directions to the Nürburgring. Finally we arrived in Insul. We drove up the course for a first inspection. Wow that's an awesome racetrack. 2km - 5 hairpins - 70km/h max. speed! And the campground is only a few meters from the finish line. Alot of riders are there already. When it got dark, Yvon Labarthe showed some of his SC8 team dvd's. It was pure action and all about speed. Saturday morning started later than planned. We got a few freerides. I fell in love with the racetrack and especially with the right hand hairpins. The tar looks a bit rough sometimes but it's really sticky. This course is just what i like.

You need to footbrake that certain amount: enough but not more than necessary! Ride the corners as clean as possible. That's very important when the exit of a corner is relatively flat. Carry as much speed as you can! The first timetrial wasn't that satisfying for me. I almost crashed in the first hairpin. Still i was leading. My second run was better but the timing didn't work. So i got a third chance. I didn't risk anything and made a clean run. I improved my time from 2min 23sec to 2min 22sec. I won the qualifying with an advantage of 2 seconds. There were alot of new talents. The boys from Sweden were riding clean and fast. The Swiss newcomer Frank Uhlmann also did very clean runs and qualified 5th. 64 riders qualified for the finals.

We all missed the big catering that was mentioned on the Kurvenrausch website. I had a big piece of beef instead. Barbeque on a big campfire is always nice. Some people were tired on Sunday morning. My legs felt heavy. First we all got a few practise runs. The heats were easy until i met Aki. I learned from other races and we didn't fight for the first place. It wasn't necessary. We qualified for the final, together with Adrien Barat from France and Bassi Haller from Germany. These four guys have never met in a final before. Three of them met regularly, but never all the four. I knew it would be very hard to win this run. I had a bad start. Aki passed Bassi right before the first hairpin. From this moment on he could ride his line. He was riding clean. That made him unbeatable. The rest of us was fighting for position two through four. It was very close. Once it was Adrien leading the trio, then it was Bassi and then i caught up. Side by side with Bassi i was entering the second last corner. We both slid alot, he crashed. Then Adrien was directly behind me. I didn't footbrake enough for the last corner, slid out into the dirt and crashed.

Luckily i still made 3rd place. Aki won. Adrien took 2nd place. They both deserved it! I was happy too. Saturday was my big day. Riding clean for the timetrials is very important for me. If you didn't come to the race you really missed a big show. I hope it's happening again next year. The course is hot! On the way back home we made a short break to get petrol and something to drink. Then we got stopped by the police. I was driving. 'You got very big pupils' the police woman said. She asked me about drugs. 'No' i said - 'i'm clean! Alot of girls tell me about my big pupils!' She didn't believe a single word. I had to do a drug test. I pissed a full cup. The police men made the test. It was negative. We drove back to Liestal. Went to bed tired but happy!

1st Aki von Glasow - CH - Fibretec
2nd Adrien Barat - F - SC8
3rd Martin Siegrist - CH - Airflow Skateboards, Globe Shoes, Abec11, Magun

Pictures by Jens and Wolli. Thanks alot!