Event Report: SloEnduro Day Klagenfurt - Falkenberg

Words: SloEnduro

A new park in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee hosted the second SloEnduro Day, a new non-competitive format, with some 140 participants from seven countries. A whole day of partying on not-too-easy trails, professional SloEnduro timing included.


You know that the SloEnduro Club is not only Slovenian, for the first part of its name. In eleven seasons, our events visited Croatia, Italy, Austria and Hungary. Not to mention where all the participants come from. We can't think of any Asians at the moment, but the riders have come from all over the world.

So it's no surprise that in the first season of our new non-competitive format, SloEnduro Day, we're also heading to nearby Carinthia in Austria. We had the only purely Austrian race on the SloEnduro calendar in 2017, Enduro Graz, and there is a long and rich tradition of cross-border Black Hole Enduro races, which in 2015 for the first time linked Slovenian and Austrian Carinthia, Jamnica and Petzen, and later twice welcomed the best riders in the world.

This was only the second SloEnduro Day, the first one being held in Nova Gorica at the end of March. The third one will take place this Saturday at Cilenca trails in Zagorje ob Savi, Slovenia!

A park just out of town


This time, the tourism organisation of the Carinthian capital Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, in cooperation with the young local mountain biking club mtb9020, hosted us practically in the middle of Klagenfurt, a city of more than 100,000 inhabitants, by the Wörthersee lake. The Falkenberg hill rises exactly 232 metres above the surface of Wörthersee. Hikers dominate the southern slope towards the lake and the city, while on the northern slope, just a few days before the event, a system of mountain bike trails was inaugurated. SloEnduro Day Klagenfurt - Falkenberg found a home on the red-marked Jelly Belly (after the popular candy, jelly beans) and the black-marked Scooby (after a cartoon character).


The base of the event was in the courtyard of the old Felsenkeller pub next to the even older Schleppe brewery, which until a few years ago was a real little ski resort called Schleppe Alm with a snowboard park. A little further on the north side of the Falkenberg are the slopes where some 140 riders from Austria, Croatia, Italy, Hungary and Slovenia rode on Saturday. Jori and Martin from Villach again added two more countries to the list, Finland and the USA, making a total of seven.


Not stupid simple

Twenty minutes or so of climbing for 150 m of vertical, a bit of waiting and socialising at the top, and off we go. A morning on one track and an afternoon on the other. Many people did six or seven laps, some did eight, so there were well over 1000 vertical metres of climbing on the day. On the other hand some may have done fewer runs than planned, because to be honest the descents were a bit challenging with some steep sections and roots, and for some even the »chicken« detours didn't help much.




The crowd was really varied, not only because of the colourful international participation: in between there were some of the aces of the Carinthian and Styrian Enduro (Peter Mihalkovits, Matthias Stonig, Lukas Stromberger, Timmy Fockenberger, Hannes Petek, Gerd Skant ...), some young Slovenian riders from Carinthia, from Kamplc and Golovec trails teams ... some downhill veterans like Georg Vit, and even an Olympic snowboarder Stefan Kaltschütz.

Special Achievements


Only the second SloEnduro day in history, but some of the awards for "special achievements" are already classic. For example, if you break a frame or a fork on the trail, you don't miss out on a prize. And the prize for the most numerous team, which was surprisingly the home team mtb9020, even though they had a whole squad of marshalls along the course. This time the photographer also chose the most photogenic one by the colour of his helmet and goggles. And more ... A bunch of nice prizes and smiling faces.


Try Falkenberg Bike Trails

The Felsenkeller Inn is just a 10-minute bike ride from Klagenfurt's Neuer Platz. From there, it's another five minutes to the start of the climb to the top of the trails. You can also climb to the top from the lake side.

If you're in Klagenfurt and have the time and the bike, you've got to try it!

Falkenberg Bike Trails mountain biking trails

See you on Saturday the 18th at the SloEnduro day Cilenca!

Some more shots by Pamina Pollanz

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