Cycling: The German champion Adelheid Morath has registered for the KMC Bundesliga opener in Wombach. And with U23 World Cup winner Helen Grobert, another top athlete is on the starting list for the Bundesliga premiere in Lohr am Main. Series title defender Simon Stiebjahn will also be there.
"I want to be present in the Bundesliga", Adelheid Morath explains why she ignores the simultaneous races in Austria and Switzerland. The Freiburg native won the overall standings of the KMC Bundesliga last year for the first time in her career.
The fact that since this year she has been pedaling for BH-Sr Suntour-KMC, a French team led by Olympic champion Julie Bresset, is irrelevant. In addition, the two-time Olympic participant is already thinking about 2016. That's when the German Championships are taking place in the Wombach district of Lohr.
Morath was crowned German champion in the elite category for the first time in 2014, breaking the long streak of 2008 Olympic champion Sabine Spitz.
Helen Grobert is also thinking about the German championship. She has just turned 23 and is one of the biggest hopes for young talent in Germany. She notched up two World Cup victories in 2014 in the U23 category and finished second in the overall standings. She also won the bronze medal at the Elite German Championships in Bad Säckingen behind Morath and Spitz.
In 2016 she could want a little more in Wombach. “It is important for me to compete in German races. But I'm also excited about the track because next year the German Championships will be there.", explains Grobert, who has been driving for the Ghost Factory Racing team since the start of the season.
With Hanna Klein, another top biker from the Black Forest is coming to Mainfranken. Adelheid Morath's teammate was a member of the German bronze relay team at the World Cup in South Africa in 2013.
Sarah Bauer (Team Merida-Schulte) from Nürtingen also got the bronze plaque there as a junior. She is now racing her first year in the Elite category.
The defending champion has also announced himself for the men. Simon Stiebjahn is twice that. The young man from Titisee-Neustadt also won the overall ranking in the Eliminator Sprint in 2014. In this discipline he also comes to Wombach as German champion.
Incidentally, the Bundesliga Sprint in the old town of Lohr am Main will also serve as a qualifying race for European and World Championships in this discipline. So the KMC Bundesliga weekend will also be a stepping stone to the international championships.
The U23 junior class is also top-class. This is where last year's German champion Georg Egger (Lexware Mountainbike Team) and his teammate Luca Schwarzbauer, third at the Junior World Championships, meet. The 2013 World and European Junior Champion Lukas Baum (Team Koch Engineering) has not yet registered with binding effect, but has promised to come. If you want to win the U19 juniors, you have to beat the local national rider of the RV Viktoria Wombach Maximilian Brandl (Lexware Mountainbike Team), who started the 2015 season promisingly.