Mountain biking

City Downhill Tour in Bratislava Ruined by Protestants

I like to say it doesn't matter what you do, what community you belong to, as long as you have something that keeps you busy, it's all good. And people around you doesn't have to understand you, what's import for you might not fit for them and that's absolutely fine. What I don't understand is that some communities or better to say "subcultures" ruin that for others while thinking the same. Or maybe not thinking at all in following case. I am talking about recent incident that occurred in Bratislava during the third leg of the City Downhill World Tour, series of urban bike races crew around Filip Polc have created. Thousands of protesters had rallied in the Slovakian capital earlier that day against what they dub “the Islamizaton of Europe” and influx of immigrants moving onto the continent. Who, in their right minds, would want to purposely ravaged what others put so much effort and energy into, destroying a great event in seconds that does not profess Islam at all? Or is it the fact that many foreign riders competed at the event? Wake up people! Would you get on an ice ring during Ice Hockey World Championship while Slovakia plays Canada? I doubt it. More from the City Downhill team on the incident below.

24. 6. 2015 Photos: 9

Words by CITY DOWNHILL communication team: 20 PRO Riders from 12 nations traveled to Slovakia to attend the 3rd round of the World Tour in Bratislava on Saturday 20 June. The training started at 10am and should last until 1pm. After a break in training due to a strong shower, the organizers fixed the obstacles with carpet and chicken wire against sliding, so the training was extended until 2pm.

Some of the riders had mechanic problems and some got injured, so in the qualification we had 16 riders which started at 3pm. Tomas Slavik had bad luck in the first run smashing his ankle on the longest DATALAN jump ( 15meters long) , so he was out.

Qualification went as scheduled, every rider was going to the finals, so it served as a test timed run. Before the final run everything was ready to go live on Slovak national TV channel and online on citydownhill.com, where the fans could watch the qualification runs as well.

5pm - the finals started as scheduled. First 2 riders came into the finish , waiting for the next one on the Hot seat. Bernardo Cruz, rider from Brazil started his final run dropping the 5 m high starting ramp. After a crash in qualifying on the same spot as Filip Polc, where they were looking for the maximum speed in the off camber, he was looking very smooth and fast .

But after the wallride, speed section and the big jump he start to notice the red flag by entering the long stair section. In a second he had to stop because of the violent people on the track . The barriers got broken, and a group of 300 people entered the track running up towards the Castle, destroying the track, attacking people ... The attack destroyed live streaming and timing hardware.

After this incident the Slovak police arrested 40 people , they sealed off the lower part of the track started to investigate the crime scene, what took 1hour. The rest of the riders were waiting if the race will continue. The track building staff checked the damages on the track and fixed the broken obstacles and fencing, but during the timing check the organizers realized that is totally broken and the race could not continue.

We cannot present any official results of this race, because the qualification was not relevant as a race run. The organizer deeply apologize to all rides who came and to all our fans for this unexpected situation and stressful times. We are very sad that our effort to organize a high level international race was destroyed by human madness and we are not sure , that we will be able to organize this race again next year.

Photos: © CDWT