By Alex Petrovic

For our 3rd European stop we went to Gyor, Hungary, for the combined final rounds of Alpe Adria Cup and Hungarian Nationals. Road to Gyor takes you through either Vienna or Budapest, and whichever way you are coming you owe it to yourself to stop and enjoy either of those two beautiful cities.

This was the first time Alpe Adria Cup had a stop in Gyor, so the location was new for everyone other than Hungarian riders.  The venue is at a man-made "wakeboarding" lake, located outside a small Hungarian village, so finding it was not easy, especially because the lake itself is not displayed on good-old Google maps (only in satellite view), nor are there any signs in the village.  Locals didn't speak any English, but tried really hard with gestures and face expressions :-)  This middle-of-nowhere location was similar to European Championship from two weeks ago and completely opposite from smack-in-the-middle-of-capital-city Balkan Championship from last week. 

Once there, however, the lake looks nice and welcoming.  With a lot of greenery and slight slopes for pits, it is wide open and feels tranquil.  There is room here for everyone, you can watch from the pits side, or go to the main tower area with a large field behind it. There are benches in the shade, even though this time shade was not needed, as the skies were overcast and weather was certainly not hot.  The water was a bit chilly, so some racers opted for long-sleeved suits.

Competitors came from all over Europe, which was obvious from car licence plates in the pits, and of course, most from Hungary and neighboring Austria, Slovakia and Slovenia.  It was also obvious we were in Europe because most of the competitors were on stand ups and a lot less on sit downs.

The track was very complex, with tight turns and it seemed to be more oriented to skis than sitdowns.

Once the first engines started running it was business as usual -- serious faces who came to win.  Especially important was the fact that this was the last round for both competitions, so it was time to wrap up 2012 season as good as possible.

Two days of racing were divided into races that some belonged just to Alpe Adria Cup, some just to Hungarian Nationals and some were combined.  Unfortunately there was no freestyle competition.

Length of each race was predetermined not by number of laps, but by length of time + 1 lap. A big clock at the front straightway was easy to see, so racers didn't need to worry about counting laps.

The pit board is well organized and updated very promptly, which is great as far as following the results.  This was especially necessary because all of the race commenting (for both Alpe Adria Cup and Hungarian Nationals) was conducted in Hungarian.

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