Second stop is a wrap !
Logan Martin victorious in Croatia. Daniel Dhers grabs the World Cup lead and Varga pulls a 900 barspin for Best Trick.
It has been a busy couple of weeks for the Elite Pro riders with events happening all over the world. The ones who took the effort to come to the UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup were welcomed by a large park set-up which had plenty of options for two solid runs in Osijek, Croatia. The 12 finalists of today also received three attempts for a Best Trick contest at the end of their performance.
In front of 4500 people the finals started off with leader of the UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup Alex Coleborn from England who had just squeezed into the 12-men final. Alex lost a bit of flow in his riding to finish 10th in the second stop. As a winner of the Fise Experience tour in 2015, England's Cam Peake gets to ride all the UCI BMX Freestyle World Cup stops in 2016. Croatia was his first final ever and he's looking forward to ride the next stops to move up further in the rankings. Daniel Sandoval (USA) ended up in 8th place and impressed with big fronties, and a strong second run. Once again Declan Brooks from the UK used the entire course at full speed and scored some good World Cup points by getting 7th place just behind Jake Leiva (USA) who pulled an icepick to tailwhip in the best trick contest first try.
Making top 5 at the World Cup is not an easy task. Although starting in group one, Mike Varga succeeded in doing so, and not only that, Mike also won the Best Trick contest by pulling a smooth 900 air on the quarterpipe with a barspin in the middle. Jack Clark (GBR) was happy with fourth place. The Tall Order rider from England has a unique style and does loads of tricks all over the course and was one of the few riders to ever touch the rails on the course.
After missing out on riding at stop one in Montpellier, Josh Perry will make sure not to miss one stop on the 2016 World Cup season. The American started off his runs with a whip drop-in from the high wall and continued to keep the pace up. The 720 X-ups and barspins added to his final score as well as the "filler tricks" like flip-whips and backflip X-ups. At this level the tricks thrown in for good measure are incredible and Josh Perry made it stick in both runs. Much respect.
It's just hard to keep up with all the tricks that Daniel Dhers (VEN) throws in his runs. The crowd was loving it and so did the judges in Croatia. Daniel made it into the spine miniramp section with a 360 double whip from the fun-box where he felt comfortable before leaving the section with a 720. After ending his first run with a wallride to tailwhip, he kept adding tricks to the last run including an opposite flair and tabled regular backflip-180. By getting second, Daniel Dhers takes over the lead in the 2016 UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup.
Australian Logan Martin is right on his tail though. After finishing 6th in Montpellier, the Hyper rider grabbed the win in Croatia. "Montpellier didn't work out too well for me because the finals were called off and my qualifiers weren't too good, but coming into this contest I just wanted to ride at home as much as I could to get prepared," the Rockstar rider said. He continued: "The last couple of weeks I had three important contests and this was one of them. The preparation worked well and I'm stoked on the win."
The UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup now moves to Denver, Colorado for the next stop on 3-5 September 2016.
Results finals UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup. Osijek, Croatia.
1 Logan MARTIN
2 Daniel DHERS
3 Joshua PERRY
4 Jack CLARK
5 Mike VARGA
6 Jake LEIVA
7 Declan BROOKS
8 Daniel SANDOVAL
9 Cam PEAKE
10 Alex COLEBORN
11 Nick BRUCE
12 Kenneth TENCIO
FISE WORLD SERIES 2016 UCI BMX FREESTYLE PARK RANKING
1 DHERS Daniel Venezuela 18000
2 MARTIN Logan Australia 16700
3 VARGA Mike Canada 15400
4 COLEBORN Alex GBR 14900
5 TENCIO Kenneth Costa Rica 11600
- LEIVA Jake USA 11600
7 BRUCE Nick USA 9800
8 CLARK Jack GBR 8800
9 PERRY Josh USA 8200
10 PERAZA Kevin USA 7200
Photo credit : Cédric De Rodot
