The SloEnduro final is coming up this weekend, the last round of international enduro series uniting events in Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. For third year in a row the venue of the last confrontation of the year will be the old and scenic town of Grožnjan in the hills of Istria peninsula in Croatia. The Enduro Grozni event is organized by BBK Grožnjan. It is also the last round of the inaugural season of EndCro series. The fortified town of artists will also become the town of mountain bikers at least for a weekend.

For the title

The fourth SloEnduro season is coming to an exciting and tight end. There are at least five riders still in the game for the overall title. Four of them won at least one round out of five. Austrian Gerd Skant (Giant Stattegg), the winner of Kamnik race, is leading with a gap of just 20 points over Slovenians Tadej Razpet (Pedal Racing Team), the only one without a win, and Peter Mlinar (Blackthorn), winner of Bovec round. Another Austrian Daniel Schemmel (Cube Action Team), winner in Trieste, is in fourth, and Vid Peršak (Gaes Orbea Enduro Crew), fastest in both Cerkno and Black Hole rounds, in fifth. Vid, also last year’s Enduro Grozni winner, is just 70 points behind Skant, while the winner will take 400, second placed 300, third 250 points and so on.

In women’s category the young Austrian Yana Dobnig (RLM Mondraker Racing Team) can already start celebrating her title, the same goes for Slovenian Matjaž Istenič (Energijateam.com) in junior men. Slovenian Robert Kordež (Black Hole Enduro Team) will not be needing to take too many risks to keep his lead in masters 1 while there may still be some dueling between Austrian Cri Maierhofer (Radlager Racing Division) and Slovenian Grega Nagode (Energijateam.com) in masters 2. Rankings

Razpet is leading the special Kenda SuperStage ranking in which the king stages of every race are added together in front of Nejc Huth (Energijateam.com). Kenda SuperStage ranking

Close to 150 riders are expected to start. Except the “home” SloEnduro nations (Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Austria and Hungary) representatives of Australia, Germany, Israel and Russia have registered for the event.

The schedule

After Saturday’s training runs the racing starts with evening prologue at 7 pm, partly on the town streets. On Sunday the first rider takes off to the start of first special stage at 10 am. There will be five stages on Sunday, one of them new, a more open one with views of Mirna river valley. Anyway the spectators will have more time to enjoy that than the riders. Total length of the race is 35 km with 1200 elevation meters.

About SloEnduro

Slovenian mountain bike enduro series SloEnduro started in 2013. The competitions are sanctioned by Slovenian Cycling Federation while SloEnduro is managed by a board consisting of organizers and teams representatives.

Links

SloEnduro website: sloenduro.com
SloEnduro Facebook: facebook.com/sloenduro
SloEnduro YouTube channel: youtube.com
SloEnduro Twitter: @sloenduro
#SloEnduro

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Photos: Nejc Bole