For more than a decade, a downhill race in the iXS Swiss Downhill Cup has been held in the small mountain village of Bellwald. Year after year, the high-altitude village in Valais offers more than just the sporting program. In addition to a pump track challenge, there will also be live music in the evenings this year, making for a fitting end-of-season party. Even though the temptation in the evening is always pretty big, the athletes mainly have to keep an eye on the final of the Swiss series. After all, there are still valuable points for the series ranking in both the seeding run on Saturday and the final on Sunday. The podium places have not yet been decided in any of the classes and several riders can still hope to win, especially in the elite categories. In both classes, exactly three athletes have the chance to win and all of them have already won a race this season. So the starting situation could hardly be more exciting.

After a two-hour delay due to the fog, the first riders from 320 participants from 17 nations set off on the 2.2-kilometer course on Sunday morning. The 16-year-old Anna Newkirk (USA - Team Project) once again dominates the Open Women category and is therefore regarded as a great young hope. The first license class is the Pro Masters. This category is the only one not won by a rider living in Switzerland. Andreas Krieger (GER - Propain/Sixpack) from Aschaffenburg was able to beat Fabian Buschor's (SUI - RSF) time by two seconds, but this did not change the Swiss rider's victory in the series classification. Martin Kägi (SUI - Velobude) came third, taking second place in the overall standings.

Janosch Klaus (SUI - Team Project) has dominated the U17 category this season, scoring full points in all races, as has his teammate Anna Newkirk. So it will be interesting to see how the 16-year-old will fare in the U19 class next year. In addition to his success in the Swiss Cup, the schoolboy from near Zurich can also claim the series title in the European Cup. Yannick Baechler (SUI - IDirt Racing Team) finished second. In the U19 class, there was an internal team competition within the Hot Trail Racing Team. In the end, Luca Henzi came out on top with the fastest run, winning not only the day's classification but also the overall classification ahead of Pascal Reusser, who has only finished ahead of his team colleague once this season.

Déjà vu in the elite categories

The penultimate class is the Elite Women. Lea Rutz (SUI - iXS Gravity Union) is the third-to-last starter on the course and sets a pretty good time of 4:21.951 minutes. Janine Hübscher is next, but can't beat her time, which at least decides the series classification. Lea Rutz thus wins the series title, just like last year. The last exciting battles for the best time are then fought by the men in front of a packed crowd in the finish area. In the end, it looks like a duel between Basil Weber (SUI - Team Project) and Lutz Weber. But there are also a few others who can be expected to win, such as Slawomir Lukasik (POL - NS Bike Factory Team) and Noel Niederberger (SUI - NS Bikes Factory Team).

Niederberger is the first to set a really fast time. He can then make himself comfortable on the Red Bull Hot Seat for a short time before Charly di Pasquale (FRA - Indem) beats his time. The next ten riders do not manage to break the specified time. Then Basil Weber enters the final bends and that looks fast. In the last bend, however, he went a little too fast, which ended in a decent drift, which last year's winner was unable to maintain and went down. But luckily for him, he crossed the finish line sliding with his bike and the clock stopped for him at 3:34.127 minutes and about one and a half seconds ahead.

Now it's Slawomir Lukasik and Lutz Weber who are missing at the finish. Lukasik lines up between his team-mate and the Frenchman, so everyone is waiting anxiously for Lutz Weber, but the best time ran through on the scoreboard and he just doesn't show up. At some point, he did roll through the finish line one-handed, but due to a crash that broke his handlebars, his hopes of a rematch were dashed.

So the result from 2016 was repeated: Basil Weber also took the series classification with his victory on the day. The interesting and spectacular course, the good infrastructure and the ideally located finish area make Bellwald a crowning finale to the iXS Swiss Downhill Cup season once again this year, with the most riders and spectators in the race series.

Results iXS Swiss DH Cup
www.ixsdownhillcup.com