Welcome to the grand finale.
Yesterday evening, the sold-out velodrome watched the boards that mean the world with excitement. The Berlin Parquet once again invited to the showdown of the giants. Leif Lampater and Jasper de Buyst started the sixth and last race as leaders. In the beginning, however, none of the almost 12.000 spectators suspected that it would only be second place in the end.
The competition put pressure on Lampater / de Buyst early on. Bartko / Reinhardt in particular won a lap in the first few laps and caused excitement.
However, Lampater/De Buyst and Müller/De Ketele countered skillfully and made up for the lap deficit. In the final laps, the Austrian-Belgian duo launched the all-important attack. Andreas Müller and Kenny de Ketele won the 103rd Sixdays in the capital by winning a lap shortly before the end. With a lap lead and 250 points, they win ahead of Leif Lampater and Jasper de Buyst (-1 lap, 308 points) as well as Robert Bartko and Theo Reinhardt (-1 lap, 236 points).
"It's a dream come true. I never thought I could win the six-day race in my hometown.", said Andreas Müller, who was born in Berlin and has chosen Austria. “I started cycling here and in 2001 I did my first six-day race. It's the nicest win of my career.”
The stayers also wore the Esso Stayers World Cup their finale. Only two points separated the top four drivers, which guaranteed excitement. With a narrow victory against the defending champion and local hero Florian Fernow with pacemaker Peter Bäuerlein, the European champion, Mario Birrer, with pacemaker Helmut clinched the overall success. With 15 rating points, he entered the list of winners of the traditional World Cup for the first time. Behind Birrer in the overall standings tied on points were Florian Fernow and three points behind Robert Retschke with pacemaker Karsten Podlesch.
Maximilian Levy from Cottbus and Robert Förstemann from Berlin went into yesterday's decisive sprint with the same number of points. Already at the beginning of the event, Förstemann came suspiciously close to his track record. With a time of 12,447 seconds, only seven thousandths separated him from an improved record time. The 28-year-old started the final run with similarly strong ambitions. After Levy and Förstemann watched each other for almost two minutes, it was the man from Cottbus who was able to gain a lead of a few meters with a strong start. But Robert Förstemann defeated Levy on the home stretch with a few millimeters lead and thus secured overall victory with 89 points. Third place overall went to the young up-and-coming sprinter Erik Balzer with 63 points.
“We've seen great sport over the past six days. True to our motto Tradition with a future, we wanted to keep these valuable sporting competitions, because that's what is expected of the Berlin Six-Day Race.", according to organizer Reiner Schnorfeil. Sixdays sports director and Berlin state association coach Dieter Stein could agree: “We experienced a gigantic atmosphere at the sporting competitions. You could see how important the Berlin six-day race was so shortly before the world championships. Here were absolute top stars at the start, who will take part in the world title fights in four weeks. Everything was great, from the ladies to the sprinters, stayers and Madison drivers. I'm happy that Andreas Müller and Kenny de Ketele were able to win here, because he grew up here in Berlin, in my team. He deserves it."