World Cup Round 4, Leogang – Track Walk

Welcome to Leogang, Austria. Destination for round 4 of the 2014 World Cup Season. Today we will continue our trend of doing a track walk with Australians. Today we took a walk down the track with Tegan Molloy and Aiden Varley, Australias two fastest juniors and some of the worlds fastest juniors currently.

The top section of track hasn’t seen many changes, with the bike park berms still being a prevalent feature, and with this sun and dry weather they have become pretty skatey and loose, there is reports of rain to come over the upcoming week, which we feel may help settle the track and provide some additional grip. As we move down the track it becomes very bike park smooth, staying steep, but with hand created rock gardens and jumps.

Once we cross an access road the track leaves the typical bike park terrain and becomes steep and rooty, with plenty of ruts to form over the weekend, weather its dry or wet. Many of the root sections are off camber and will be challenging, especially if it does rain and get wet in the wooded sections.

After we make our way through the top woods section the track opens up onto a very smooth bike park track, this part of the track is groomed perfectly and the jumps are spot on, the speeds that are likely to be seen over this section of track we think will be super high, the section extends for quite some time and we feel it A�may play a part in tire choice, with perhaps a semi slick being selected to keep the speed up as the rest of the track doesn’t seem to require a really aggressive tire currently, though things may change over the week of riding.

From here we delve back into a wooded section, the section is in the same place as last year, however the builders have cut in a different line, which appears to have speed reduction in mind, with many sharp deviations and off camber sections, the track then dives into a well used section of track with plenty of line choices, people who are willing to take a risk in this section may make up a huge slab of time, if they can find a smooth line avoiding many of the bomb holes already existing.

The track then enters a more rough high speed section with some high speed jumps which then enter a steep and loose section where many of the berms have been cut out to make a nearly straight line down the hill, from here the track joins the classic Leogang finish, dropping in over the steep entry to the lower bike park jumps and high speed section towards to finish line, with the quicker inclusions before the drop in, many riders may have to brake much more before entering it or risk getting excessive air on the downside.