World Cup round 4, Leogang, Austria

Leogang, Austria – the fourth stop of WC tour. Our team arrived to Leo on Thursday morning straight from Fort William. The track was changed a bit compared to last years. New top section and a few changes to the bottom part too. We had to get used to it a bit as it was completely different than Fort William. The changes made the track faster and the gaps closer. It was one of the closest races in WC history.



The weather was really funny, sunny with thunderstorms popping up. We trained on both, dry and wet and we were looking forward to timed runs.
The qualifying was about to be hard, as there was about 240 men and only 80 could go through to the finals. The best qualifier of the team had Matej Charvat with 34th, Matt Walker came down around 60th. Tom Matthews and Reece Potter were riding fast whole training but were not lucky to put a solid run together for a qualis.




Sunny Sunday, the track was bone dry and it was about to be a tough battle where thousands of a second count. Matt Walker had a loose run with few mistakes which put him to 68th place. Matej Charvat felt he can finally compete, as he had solid splits during the qualis. He tried to charge, but made a few mistakes up top. He was still coming with a solid time, but he had a really bad crash on the second to last jump and DNF. Bruises and swollen wrist forced him to visit a hospital. At the first check it seems that all the bones are in one piece, even the ti screw in the scaphoid seems to be fine in the thread (haha). Wish him a quick recovery, hopefully he will be back on the bike soon.
Next stop for the team is City Downhill World Tour in Bratislava.



Photo credits by Lukas Navratil