The Other Almabtrieb report



Race reports are pretty dull. Someone won, someone qualified fastest, someone else got taken out in the first round, blah blah. Racing makes awesome watching, but do you really want to sit there and read a page about that when you can just look at the results on the internet about who is faster than who on a forum somewhere? Thought not…

 

 

Mike River keeps JM Duran at bay on the straightaway… Lush vs S9…

Almabtrieb is an awesome race. It’s a really good hill, in a friendly village on the German/Austrian border. You start your run in Austria, and cross the finish line in Germany. It has a reputation for being very well-organised, which in reality means that everyone gets lots of practice runs in and has very tired legs at the end of every day. The race party is usually pretty crazy, there is a swimming pool right next to the campsite, all the right ingredients for a good downhill event.

 

Hill porn… stop dribbling.

But what really happens when 200 of the same kind of idiot invade a small mountain village for a week? Did you really think that all that happens is some serious racing and a bit of a knees-up at the end? Almabtrieb this year was a heady mixture of full-throttle downhill racing, beer, monkey suits, sunshine and thunderstorms, music, and crazy Canadians.

 

 

Guess who showed up all the way from Oz to skate the hill in a gorilla suit holding a banana? He tore apart the party too… Kurt Nischel


Let’s talk about the hill… because that’s what most racers are most concerned with, and that’s the main reason the event is so good. It starts with a long push start (the big reason Dalua and Bassi Haller qualified so much faster than everyone else – they have a big push!), then you get your tuck sorted out and hold on as the road drops away and accelerates you through a series of flat out, scream-if-you-wanna-go-faster sweeping turns. There was a bit of a headwind all weekend, which restricted max speeds to about 45mph, and made the tuck position all important. After the sweepers there is a rather scary-looking blind crest in the road, which really sorts the wheat from the chaff – it’s temping to come out of your tuck early at this point because you can’t see where the road goes, but the faster riders were just keeping their heads down and charging it.

 

 

Flat out, don’t break that tuck… Mischo Erban and Nate Lang hold on through the sweepers


The road then drops steeply into a hard 90 degree left-hander. This is where races were won and lost, as riders tried to outbrake each other and hit the corner section as fast as possible. A very few were really turning heads by pre-drifting the corner rather than footbraking, very difficult to judge speed and line doing this, but if you’ve got the skills to pull if off it definitely seemed to pay dividends!

Kevin Reimer showing us that the days of footbraking could be numbered… style and skill from Canada!



Following the hard left is a 180 degree right, then a 180 degree left, then a short straight into a mega long, fast 180 degree left. This corner is awesome… You just hold your tuck for as long as you dare, locked into a seemingly never-ending corner, watching the hay bales getting closer and closer… then it’s over the river (the border between Germany and Austria!) and over the finish line, hopefully ahead of everyone else…

 

“Dalua” Siliva braking very, very hard… this guy is a beast

 

 

Pete Connolly enters the corner complex

 

 

Erik Lundberg grabs a rail and wait for the end of that never-ending carousel


The standard of skating this year was unreal. Every year it gets better at the top level, but this year was just silly. To hold your own in the racing heats (64 qualify), you have to be able to do some pretty heavy moves at max speed! It’s getting tactical too, with some people pretending to footbrake then drifting into the corner to put opponents on the wrong line. Downhill skating is evolving very, very fast at the moment, the equipment is getting much better, but really there are just so many young rippers coming into it now just tearing the sport apart, it’s a wonder that the old guard can keep up!

 

 

Bassi Haller being chased by the storm clouds in a rainy practice session


Watching the racing was amazingly intense, these guys are bringing downhill into another dimension. Everyone was especially impressed by the Canadian lot, K-Rimes, Scoot et al just killed it on the hill and ended up making it a Canadian 1-2. Fully deserved, those guys are amazing.

 

 

Scoot doing what he does best… I asked him why he always skates with his mouth open and he told me it was because his aerohelmet is so small that his head doesn’t fit in it if he has hi mouth shut, and that’s just how he skate all the time now!

Prizegiving this year didn’t involve all winners having to get their arses out, for some reason. However, the race organisers did decide to give out prizes for “Best Style,” “Best Crash” and “Sketchiest Footbrake” which was cool. Patrick Rizzo should have won “Best Crash” I reckon, his greatest involved sliding out on his belly onto the grass, jumping up and grabbing a beer off an unwary spectator, downing half of it before skating off down the hill with it in his hand in last place… perhaps that was why he won “Best Style” though. I think there was a party afterwards, too…

 

Scoot gets beer on the camera (and everything else in range) after taking the win. Good job!

 

 

Mandonkey (Darren Rathbone, Mike River and Rob Mckendrie) rock an audience of five at their one and only gig in the campsite. Following a dispute with other band members, Darren announced that was splitting from the group (“This band is shit, I’m leaving!”) to pursue his own solo career. Megaphone Helmet, coming to a race near you…

 

What a race… I hope I have conveyed some of what happens at these events to all you race virgins reading this. Get out there… downhill is evolving and there’s a lot of fun to be had!


Massive thanks to: Stephan Risch www.rischaerohelmets.com and Bassi Haller the race organisers, Andi and Vroni from Boneless Longboard Shop in Munich for giving me a lift, all the Lush riders Pete, Mike, Kurt, Jocelyn, Jibo and Jojo for skating super hard and all making the cut, Darren, Yorck Dertinger, Eimer the Race director, all the marshals, and everyone else who was there… see you next year!