BIKE Festival Saalfelden Leogang 2025: That was day 2: Drops, racing and sun, sun, sun!
Dimitri Lehner
· 14.09.2025
With David against Goliat
"Up, up, march, march!" is our motto at the BIKE Festival Leogang 2025, as the weather forecast announces rain from midday. We can hardly believe it, we hardly want to believe it, because our daily bucket list is full and we want to tick everything off. But the weather in the mountains has its pitfalls. The sky is still blue and we jump into our protector waistcoats and full-face helmets because World Cup star David Trummer is offering a workshop: "Through Vali's hell with David". Hobby downhillers can sign up and the runner-up world champion explains how he managed to become runner-up at the World Cup in Leogang. We can't miss this, because Vail's hell is our Goliath, a fearsome opponent, a horror descent of roots, edges and nasty steepness. And David is our David. We want to master Vali's hell with him.
Top tips from David Trummer
- Central position on the bike. "Tense your stomach, your arms and legs can move, must move, but the centre of your body should be firm and tense.
- The view leads! If you look into the catch fence, into the bushes after the steep descent, that's where you'll end up. Your gaze must immediately jump forwards again!
- Start the turns on the outside. Really wide, really outside and then pull into the turn!
We actually manage to master the Goliat descent with David's tips. However, we can't fully "unlock" Vali's hell, firstly because we missed out one of the most difficult sections: a high step with a mini landing and because the iconic final drop was blocked. Our conclusion: It was a great experience to "work out" the World Cup route with David Trummer and reach the finish line without crashing. Thank you, David!
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Yoga with video star Timo Pritzel
After the rumble-pump on the World Cup course with David Trummer, we are pretty tense. David had also said: "Tighten the core, the centre of the body!" Now we feel like yoga. That's what Timo Pritzel offers. Timo was a superstar in the heyday of the freeride movement. The Berliner was the only German to win the high-calibre Whistler Slopestyle, took part in the New World Disorder video series and was the first to attempt a double backflip. Timo then discovered yoga for himself and saw it as the perfect complement to biking. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to his yoga class after all and postponed it to day 3. The kids were getting ready for racing. We had to see that!
This is racing!
The determination with which the youngsters tackled their races was unbelievable. We watch and are thrilled. Sabine Oswald moderates the race, but Sabine is much more than just a moderator, she puts all her passion into promoting young talent and is happy with every young racer who crosses the finish line. And we are too!
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Mister Uphill Flow: Stefan Schlie and his bag of tricks
Uphill flow is Stefan Schlies' mission. The former trial pro showed off all his skills in Leogang and passed on his fascination to amateur bikers. Because with finesse, skill and the right use of the motor, you can experience on the way up on an e-bike what everyone else only experiences on the way down. In other words: double fun, because everyone has to get back down again. We would have loved to ride with Stefan, but we had to continue to the T-Line, the newest bike park trail in Leogang. The sky is still blue, but it's already well past midday. Does the weather mean well with us and disregard the weather forecast? On vera, we'll see!
The T-Line. The newest route in Leogang
The trail builders moved a lot of earth for the new T-Line. This fact raised expectations. We experienced a wild sequence of berms in XXL format. If you want to get through the turn smoothly, you have to take a long swing, not be frightened by the steep walls and have a lot of experience to avoid smearing or riding a stretcher. There are few jumps. Just a few challenging sharkfins and tables. And lots of bends. So many that we got dizzy. And? We were a little disappointed, so we decided to stick to DH and Flying Gangster, which is more fun for us and then you can also take all the drops and jumps in the finish area that you would otherwise miss out on.
The sun is shining, Saturday is over, now a Stiegl beer as a celebration beer, as a pleasure beer, as a "We've made it through Vali's hell" beer and then hope that day 3 is just as spoilt by sunshine and action as day 2.
Dimitri Lehner
Editor
