The inaugural Wheels of Speed Downhill Challenge (running alongside the tenth Sympatex-Bike Festival in Willingen, Germany) proved to be a fairytale weekend for Filip Polc.
Polc crashed during qualifying, rendering him unconscious for four minutes. The general consensus amongst the other riders was that him competing in the finals wasn’t a great idea, but the following day Polc was on the course again.
“Everyone told me not to race today, but I wanted to try some practice runs and see how I felt,” he said.
Needless to say, Polc had an early run in the finals – being out cold for four minutes in qualifying tends to have that effect – so it wasn’t a great surprise that he was in the hot seat after his run. Perhaps more surprising was the time – Polc’s 1:58.01 was considerably quicker than Greg Minnaar’s top qualifying run.
Everyone was going faster in the finals, but to the growing disbelief of the crowd Polc hung on in there as rider after rider came down. Finally there was just Minnaar to go. The South African put in a smooth, fast run, knocking a big chunk of his qualifying time, but ending up just 0.02 seconds shy of Polc.
Unconscious one day, fastest man down the hill the next and €12,000 richer for his troubles – quite a weekend…
Results
- Filip Polc 1:58.01 (SVK) Gravity Group
- Greg Minnaar 1:58.03 (RSA) Honda G-Cross
- Steve Peat 1:58.45 (GBR) Santa Cruz Syndicate
- Sam Blenkinsop 1:58.74 (NZL) Gravity Group
- Andrew Neethling 1:58.91 (RSA) Mongoose
- Bryn Atkinson 1:58.92 (AUS) GT
- Jared Graves 1:59.23 (AUS) Yeti
- Marc Beaumont 1:59.38 (GBR) MBUK/Santa Cruz
- Sam Hill 2:00.34 (AUS) Iron Horse/Monster
- Nico Vink 2:01.16 (BEL) Trek
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