Robert Gavenda before the U23 start.
Hungarian U23 rider, David Puskas
I quite like the way these three riders turned at the same time.
I have to be honest, due to certain logistical issues, I wasn’t able to pay as much attention to the U23 World Cup as I wanted to. So I don’t really know how well Pawel Szczepaniak rode during the season. But I do remember his second place last year, behind Philipp Walsleben at Hoogerheide, at the Worlds. This year, he dominated the almost from the start.
Tom Meeusen rode quite consistently through the year and thus he won the overall World Cup title. But the World Championship doesn’t seem to be his thing. He wasn’t able to match the efforts of the top three, even though he has superb bike-handling skills, as you can see above.
Not everybody was as skilful as Meeusen, Christian Cominelli slipped on this slippery sloop and hit the icy ground. Luckily, he wasn’t really hurt, so he could carry on and finished at the 22nd place.
Freshly crowned Junior World Champion, Tomas Papritska was walking around the course, watching the U23’s race.
Last year’s Junior World Champion finished 9th today, which is a good result in his first U23 year. His World Cup season didn’t start too well but by the end of the season, he managed to find his form so I expect some great performances in the next season.
Pawel Szczepaniak
Tom Meeusen
Two brothers on the podium of the World Championship? Sounds quite unlikely, but during the last lap, it became more and more likely, that the Szczepaniaks will occupy the first two spots on the podium. The younger brother, Kacper turned out to be the slower one today, so he won the silver medal.
Tom Meeusen talks to the Belgian media.
The two brothers. Both of them were in tears, however, for totally different reasons. Kacper (on the left) was very-very upset and I guess, the fact, that they were brothers, didn’t really help.
