2021 Red Bull Romaniacs results: Mani Lettenbichler wins ahead of Sherco battle
Manuel Lettenbichler has won his third straight Red Bull Romaniacs after topping the results on a relentless final day of the Hard Enduro World Championship race which saw an immense battle for the podium between Sherco teammates, Wade Young and Mario Roman, with Billy Bolt pushing hard right the final hillclimb.
2021 Romaniacs Offroad day 4 in a nutshell:
- Taking charge of the final day at the 2021 Romaniacs sealed what was the easiest race victory in the Carpathian mountains for many years. Certainly Manuel Lettenbichler’s third win in a row was his easiest – there were no final hillclimb dramas this year.
- Mani made sure of the win by closing down a six minute start time deficit to Wade Young in the first half of the day to control his advantage and with that secure an overall winning margin of 27 minutes and 28 seconds. Read that again…
- Behind Mani all was to play for between Wade Young, Mario Roman and Billy Bolt who started the day in second, third and fourth respectively.
- Wade Young had done the hard work on day three, establishing a gap which he could manage. Billy caught him on the track and the pair set a hell of a pace opening the piste with Mani tagging along.
- The rogue element was Mario who started further back and out of sight of his teammate and importantly Billy who was doing everything to close a gap to the Spaniard on the time sheets.
- But as the almost five hour day wore on Mario was impressive and ticked off faster checkpoint times than everyone to secure second on the day behind Mani and third overall behind his Sherco teammate – giving Sherco their best Romaniacs result with both factory riders on the 2021 podium. “We race for 20 hours and in the end it is so close, anything can happen and you have to be super-focused the whole time.” Explained Mario at the finish.
Four days in and they were still giving it some...
- The GASGAS pairing of Taddy Blazusiak and Michael Walkner pulled fifth and sixth on the final day, just ahead of Jonny Walker who finishes a clear fifth overall for the week. “One year I need luck on my side,” said Taddy after taking a crowd-pleasing jump into the mud at the finish, the legend takes sixth ahead of best placed rookie, Trystan Hart who was one of the few riders to scale the final hillclimb at first attempt.
- Sandra Gomez claimed a Gold class finishers medal for the second time placing 29th overall in a total time of 33hrs1m27s which means she rode for half as much time again than the winner!
- Toni Mulec saved the best till last to take the final Silver class day win. The result secured second overall behind Sherco USA’s Nick Fahringer who has been totally in charge of the Silver riders all week. British rider Jamie Lewis had a very good week on the Steve Plain Beta for third overall.
- Artem Kuncevich was in charge of the Bronze class again on day four and with that seals the overall victory ahead of Romanian Bogdan Butiu with Iceland’s Ágúst Viggósson third.
- Pol Tarres is classified in 18th to become the first rider to finish the Bronze class on an Adventure bike.
- Hats off to Slovenian Tjaša Fifer who has taken the overall Iron class victory for herself ahead of a multinational line-up of Swiss rider Raffael Panzeri and Estonian Timo Hermlin.
- Russian Dmitry Akhmanaev ruled the the Atom class ahead of his compatriot Roman Kurbatov with American Danny Melvin third overall.
* results will update
2021 Red Bull Romaniacs overall classification, Gold class:
Silver class:
Bronze class:
Iron class:
Atom class:
Photo Credit: Future7Media | Andrea Belluschi
