For many years, the Bike Festival in Willingen has hosted a round of the iXS Downhill Cup. This year, too, the race was completely sold out with around 500 participants from 25 countries and provided what was arguably the most action-packed event of the festival.

The iXS Downhill Cup has been around since 2003. The series made its debut in Willingen in 2014 and has since returned to Ettelsberg eleven times as part of the Bike Festival. Although the former World Cup course from 2005 has already been adapted for use as a bike park, it still undergoes some modifications every year to make the course suitable for racing.

The Track on Ettelsberg

The approximately 1.5-kilometer-long course, with an elevation gain of about 200 meters, can be described as fast and well-worn. A notable feature this year was the extremely wide course layout, which offered many different lines. The course features numerous jumps, root sections, steep sections, and well-worn ruts. The upper section was characterized by high speeds, followed by a steeper section with various line choices, before crossing the road gap and heading into the meadow turns. The lower section runs through the former four-cross course, offering extremely undulating terrain that proved very challenging at high speeds.

Training and Seeding Run

During Friday's practice session, the weather was summery and extremely dry. The large number of drivers on the relatively short track led to heavy traffic and challenging conditions. The goal was to memorize the racing lines and identify braking points. However, several track closures also caused delays, which were quite exhausting in the high temperatures. Despite the forecast of thunderstorms, the weather held out until the end of practice. It wasn't until some time later that strong winds and heavy rain began to batter the participants in the paddock, leaving a few tents unusable afterward.

Saturday started off a bit wet, but the dust was only settled for a short while. By the time the licensed training session began, the course was back in a similar condition to the day before. After lunch, things really got underway with the seeding run. Karla Jörger (GER – DH Talent Team) and Lino Neumann (GER – Scott Gravity Racing) set the day’s fastest times.

Sunday - Finals Day

On Sunday, however, the conditions changed once again. Just as practice was about to begin, it started to rain. The middle section, in particular, became extremely slippery and turned into a real challenge. But the biggest difficulty wasn’t the conditions themselves, but rather the changing conditions, because as the morning went on, the track dried out again, forcing us to adapt once more.

In the Elite Men class, Max Becker (GER – DH Talent Team) ultimately handled the course best. He clocked a time of 1:58.242 minutes, securing the victory by a narrow margin of 1.5 seconds over Hannes Lehmann (GER – YT RD). Julian Steiner (GER – ergotec_racing_team) finished third. In the Elite Women class, Karla Jörger (GER – DH Talent Team) won with a time of 2:19.236 minutes and a razor-thin lead. Just over a tenth of a second behind, Hanna Blochberger (GER – Eberhardt Racing Unit) finished in second place. Lea Stornebel (GER – Ergotec Racing Team) came in third.

Willingen once again hosted a top-tier race, continuing to fly the flag for international downhill racing in Germany. The festival provided the perfect setting, the course was perfectly suited to the occasion, and the atmosphere, thanks to the countless fans lining the course, was simply fantastic. The action continues in three weeks with the iXS Downhill Cup in Semmering, Austria.