From July 9 to 15, 2018, the Gorki Gorod resort hosted the Russian Downhill Cup and Championship. The country's only high-altitude Gorki Bike Park, located at an altitude of +960 m, hosted competitions of this level for the first time. More than 100 athletes from Moscow and the Moscow region, Krasnodar Krai, St. Petersburg, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Arkhyz, Nalchik, Perm, Tuapse and other regions of the country took part in the races.
Boys and girls, juniors and masters, elite and amateurs - the first all-Russian downhill competition in Sochi brought together mountain bike fans aged 11 to 30 from all over the country.
The Russian Cup in Downhill Mountain Biking turned out to be dangerous and very spectacular. According to the organizers (Mountain Bike School MtbSochi.ru, Gorki Gorod resort), the level of extreme and stress on the bike trails was off the charts! The winner with a minimal gap (0.834 seconds) was Vitaly Khripunov, second place went to Petr Vinokurov, bronze went to Vladimir Pulyaevsky.
The results of the Russian Championship were announced the day before, on July 15 — the starts, which gathered many racers and spectators, took place in heavy rain, on a slippery and dangerous track. Not everyone managed to complete the extreme jumps with a turn in the final — the track was generous with falls, and doctors were called.
The organizers specified that 23 juniors took part in the Championship! In other words, everyone who was worried about the future of downhill can sleep soundly.
Many racers have not yet had the opportunity to study the track's behavior in bad weather. Vitaly Khripunov (3rd place) emphasized that for this reason he lost several seconds, yielding to Nikolay Pukhir (2nd place). The winner of the Russian championship was Petr Vinokurov.
Source: trn-news.ru