Instead of eight hours, six hours was enough. The dirty 123 had a great training session three weeks before the first race.
This is also how the season can start, and in the end we didn’t see anyone who wasn’t happy with Saturday’s baptism.
Before we start the “real” racing season, we held the Kamplc SloEnduro Day with the oldest SloEnduro organisers, Kamplc of Ajdovščina. As you remember from last year, “the Day” is a non-competitive event where riders take timed laps, and only they get to know their achievements and can compare them with their teammates and other participants.
To add to the fun, we were joined by the 20chocolate Downhill Cup. Two days in one!
Despite the wet conditions, the SloEnduro / 20chocolate DH Cup Day was once again suitable for new riders who want to try racing for the first time this year. Despite the poor prospects, together with Kamplc we decided not to take the opportunity to postpone the race, which was an option in the propositions. Next weekend might not be wet, but it will certainly rain during the week, so the track would not be any better. In Ajdovščina it started to rain at night and the track got a bit wetter than we expected. It didn’t rain in the first part of the timed runs, but it rained again in the second part, which only helped – there was more water on the track and the mud didn’t stick to the tyres. The only really slippery part was the section on the meadow. To make sure that the participants didn’t lose their spirits, we had shuttles running, an exception in the enduro events.
It was not a day of dusty “shredding” and sitting in the sun in the pits, but you could still see smile after smile from under the mud. The first race, the SloEnduro TCS Nova Gorica (Borderless Edition) in three weeks’ time, won’t be easy, but it might be a little easier after this.
Special Achievements
The timing transponders started to pile up before the time was up, even the most persistent ones gave up almost two hours before 5pm, so we could start awarding the “special achievements” prizes – to the last one to return a chip (Rok Gleščič), to the one with the most laps (Karim Mladovan – 8 laps!, Maja Vojska and Lana Kuzma 4 each, newcomers Jože Robežnik and Tadej Kališnik also 4 on the ebikes), the oldest participant (Arsen Laharnar), the youngest who waited until the end … There was also something the fastest, but as it is not a race and we don’t publish the results, we won’t give out the name here.
It is also a special achievement to have got 123 riders from six countries on their bikes on what was clearly going to be a wet day! Mostly the young ones. The first social gathering of the season, a great training and the trails of Ajdovščina are a guarantee for participation.
History of Kamplc Enduro
If we count Saturday as another Kamplc Enduro, it was the 15th in a row. The first one was held in 2011 on Javornik, it was also the first enduro race in Slovenia, won by the late Miha Halzer. The last time it was held there was in 2015, the following year there was a break and since 2017 it has been held in Ajdovščina. Since they held two in 2012 (one sprint race), there have been 15 of them.
Sebastjan, Nejc and the Kamplc crew have broken with tradition this year and they still have a few ideas how to go on. Let’s wait until the end of the season and be surprised by their plans for 2026.
Photos by Klavdij Blažko, stand by for two photo galleries, with Aleš Bajec contributing his own.
