Leogang DH: BINGO-FULL HOUSE!
Highlights of the day are Hattie’s 5th and Stan’s 6th place, but our story from the race week in Leogang has so much more fantastic moments. Most notably – all four riders qualified for the finals, which is something not many teams can say at any point in the season. We also walk away with couple of new personal bests!
Leogang is a venue with one of the longest traditions on the World Cup, but despite being in the calendar for so long it always serves with the amazing race and asks for everything from riders. And lots of times from the teams as well. 2026 edition was not different, challenging weather conditions with days of raining and then finals under the beautiful summer skies made downhill racing extremely hard. But AON riders excelled, they are Brits and Scots after all and having days of non-stop rain is called a normal bike ride for them.
That didn’t make racing any easier for us. Conditions on the track were tricky, risk of a crash was present on any meter of any of the laps. But building confidence through practice paid off on the first day of racing – Hattie, Reece and Stan qualified on first go, no questions asked. Henry had to go to Q2, but kept it cool and performed a very solid run for the first finals of the season. This was one of the biggest team successes and it showed how fast our riders are!
Finals were a completely different story, with top part drying very fast. We sticked to cut Dirty Dans as the bottom was still muddy, the results proved this was the right decision.
Stan showed another strong performance on the junior race to take P6, his new personal best in the World Cup. He’s now fifth on overall rankings. Henry opened the elite men race, but had a slide off the track on the top off camber, and lost too much time pulling the bike back on the slippery grass. Reece went out of the start gate halfway through the men’s finals and showed on of his best runs in the last two seasons. Aggressive riding took him to a well-deserved top-20 finish.
Our last rider on the hill was Hattie – in line with the reverse order of the women/men race – that again showed great consistency and was in the battle for the podium till the very last section of the track. She was 7th and defended 3rd place overall.
Reece Wilson (P18 ME): “Super happy with my performance this weekend. I wanted to push myself a bit more and take more risk to find the edge. My best result so far with AON so I think it’s paying off but I’m keen for more!”
Henry Kerr (P29 ME): “Not the finals I had hoped for, after a good morning of practise I was really looking forward to finals, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Got caught out by the changing conditions in my run but I knew I had to push hard dropping early with the track drying. As much as it’s hurts it’s still progress and a good step forward.”
Results DH – qualies / finals / overall:
Hattie – 5th / 7th / 3rd
Reece – 15th / 18th / 27th
Henry – 10th Q2 / 29th / 42nd
Stan (juniors) – 5th / 6th / 5th
Team rankings – 13th overall (12th team of the day)
Photos: Grega Stopar