1997 Grundig World Cup in Budapest, Hungary

A couple of months ago I was at home and my Dad gave gave me a handful of old photos I took back in the ninties. Among the personal photos, there were quite a few from the three Grunding World Cup races held in Budapest. I’m yet to find photos from the very first race in 1995, but in a series of three posts, I’ll show the photos I took in 1997, 1998, plus my first ever World Cup abroad in Kaprun in 2001.

Going through the photos I remembered how excited we were to have the biggest show in mountain biking in Budapest, having all the riders we’ve only seen in the magazines come to Budapest! After the elation of the race in 1995, the second race in 1997 was even more exciting.

The course of the race remained similar to the original course from ’95 and those who lived in Budapest rode the WC course as often as possible, pretending that we were Frischknecht or Martinez.

To be honest, I can’t remember much from the race, apart from the fact that they climbed the ‘Terminator’ climb at a blistering pace. The ‘Terminator’ was the hardest climb in that area and us, mere mortals could only climb it on the granny ring, and even then only just, so seeing the pros storm up there on the middle ring five or six times seemed utterly unreal.

The other thing I remember is the camera I used. It was my Dad’s Zenit E, an old and outdated Russian SLR from the early seventies. Obviously, it lacked any kind of modern features like autofocus and the light metering was also a bit awkward, you had to take you eyes off the viewfinder and check a gauge on the top of the camera to see how much light there was. All in all, it was hard work but at the time it was good enough.

These are scanned photos and I didn’t do any kind of digital enhancement, so apologies if the colours are odd here and there and some of them are slightly blurry or otherwise compromised.