Ever wondered what goes into building a trail suitable for a World Cup? It’s got to be challenging, and it’s got to be built well enough to stand up to plenty of practice sessions and riders hammering their way down the trail – whatever the weather on the day may offer. You don’t want it to look like a concrete superhighway either, so any construction materials need to strike a balance between durability and looking reasonably natural.
The folks behind the new Croatian round of the World Cup at Losinj have released this video showing the effort that’s gone in to building the new downhill trail. Much of it has been out of reach of big machinery, so there’s a lot of sweat gone into building this trail.
https://vimeo.com/257729695
As well as showing the effort that goes into the trail building, it gives some idea of the style of track we can expect to see when the competition kicks off on 21st April 2018. It looks to have a very natural feel, but with plenty of rocks. Pointy ones at that. Which riders will that suit, we wonder? Will this be another race that’s decided by who doesn’t puncture, rather than who can go fastest? And will the dust we see in the video stay dusty, or will there be rain to turn it to a slippery sticky peanut buttery mess? In theory, the odds are in favour of sunshine, with Losinj being a particularly sunny corner of Croatia.
There are some monster sized drops, with lovely rocky landings. The racing hasn’t even started and already we can hear us saying ‘oof!’ at some of the runs we’re going to see. Let’s hope it’s a great start to a competitive season, and not an injury-fest.
Comments (4)
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Is all that white rock limestone? Looks brutal regardless…
Them rocks ain’t designed for falling on!
I lived and rode on one of the islands further south.
Yes, and yes.
Croata looks a great untapped mountain biking country, would love to see some guided “enduro” companies there.