Adrian Gumanita and Romane Favia win in super wet Downhill Arena
Adrian Gumanita and Romane Favia win in super wet Downhill Arena
The two young stars of inline downhill, 21y/o Romane Favia (SWI) and 23 y/o Adrian Gumanita (MOL) won both the Time Trial and the Mass Race on the highly technical 1.5km course in Northern Italian Pre-Alps.
The track was very curvy, with almost no straight lines, and a wide range of different turns, three of which required braking. After the difficult 2020 season, international riders have started to travel again and these are great news for the discipline.
Riders from Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium and even Canada took part either in the inline or longboard race.
After the whole day of Friday has been dedicated to practice runs (or “freerides” like skateboarders call them), time trials took place on Saturday, on a perfectly dry course.
Adrian Gumanita won the race, setting the best time in both runs, but with a not-too large margin on Italian National Team member Tiziano Ferrari though. German Veteran Theo Frommlet was able to grab the bronze with a solid second run, after a bad crash in the first one.
Among women, one of the new superstars of the sport, Romane Favia, won the race with an amazing 10 seconds gap on Anne Rebout who is a member of the German National Team, Elizabeth Salazar (ITA) finished third, with another step on her improvement track.
Both Favia, who, when she is not skating, is a well known professional violinist and Gumanita, bumped in the world class inline downhill scene this year and they’ll have a great chance to step on the most important podium of all, at the 2021 WorldSkate ™ Inline downhill world championships which will take place in Bettola, Italy, next September. The village is located about 20k from Piacenza, where Adrian lives. He cannot miss the opportunity to fight for the World Title on his home track!
On Sunday afternoon, mass races were scheduled, and right before warm up runs, a 50+Mph wind started to blow and destroyed gazebos, tents and put the whole area out of power for some minutes.
Around 3.00 pm it started to rain, and it will never stop until the end of the event, around 6.00.
Due to the presence of a great number of longboard riders (the event was actually organized by “Sbanda Brianza”, a very active skateboard team and inline downhillers were a minority), Mass races were the most important section of the competition. And they took place under the rain, all of them.
Especially the Downhill Skateboard quarter Finals have been run under one of the heaviest rains ever seen in a downhill competition.
Among men, Gumanita, Ferrari, Doardo and newcomer John Herrera qualified easily for the final, with the girls who skated for the win in one single final run. Romane Favia said hello to her opponents a few steps after the start and never looked back. As expected, Anna Rebout of Germany came out second and Elizabeth Salazar third in the rain.
In the men’s ultimate race, run in a very difficult half wet / half dry course, unlucky Tiziano Ferrari dislocated his right shoulder in the first corner and could not fight for the title, he finished the race 4th, anyway. Life was easy for Adrian Gumanita without his strongest opponent, in fact he won with a big gap on Giorgio Doardo, excellent second and John Herrera, who could not believe he stepped on the podium!
Despite the rainy and cold weather in the last day, the whole event has been successful, with a friendly environment and good harmony among the different disciplines on wheels. Shared events may be so good!
