Mountain biking tends to be a pretty technical sport, depending on the discipline. Competing at a high level generally requires great bike handling skills, quick reflexes, solid body positioning, and impeccable balance to properly navigate obstacles like rocks, roots, steep climbs, drops, and anything else thrown in a rider’s path.
In order to encourage that control, youth riders in Germany competed in pretty fascinating obstacle courses on their bikes at the Black Forest MTB Cup. It appears that the competition included a cross country race and a slalom or technical course, depending on the age group. The special technical competitions, offered as part of the Black Forest MTB Cup, are called VPACE Challenge.
In this specific technical course hosted in the German city of Hausach, riders must handle several obstacles including a seesaw, a full bunny-hopped 360 without letting the front wheel leave a hula hoop, cone navigation, and much more. Through all of it the riders can’t touch the ground, and must use track stands and hops to move throughout tight turns and odd angles.
The video above shows U13 rider Erik competing in the obstacle course. In this specific competition he finished in 5th place, but he’s taken first place in plenty of other races out there. For being just 11 or 12, this kid is already hammering out a huge number of bike races including mountain biking, road biking, and cyclocross. Of course biking is a much more popular sport in Europe than it is in North America.
