Lars Oesterle won the Absolute Spring Battle in Austria

The Swatch TTR 3-Star Absolut Spring Battle took place this past weekend, and after some heavy fog followed by high winds that pushed the competition back a day, riders were thankfully greeted with spring like conditions and tore the park apart. German rider Lars Oesterle landed himself on top of the podium, grabbing 550 TTR Ranking points and the 3-Star Title with Stefan Fankhauser (AUT) finishing second and Matevz Pristavec (SLO) claiming third.

The shape crew led by Seppi Harml and Christoph Walchhofer manage to surprise and push the limits every year with creative obstacles and this year was no exception, besting last year’s efforts resulting in jaws-dropping left, right and center. The Jam kickers presented itself with a table that launched riders over 20 m with huge airtime. Following the first kicker, riders were faced with a sick combo obstacle: a wall ride 10 m tall, the infamous IOU-Transformer box set up as an A-Frame down box 20 m long, and finally into a step up kicker with a 15 m gap.

Qualifications provided two runs for each rider, with the best run counting. Things were mixed up with an added element of competition as 11 riders rather than the planned 8 moved into the finals due to three equal results in the qualifying rounds.

The finals proved that riders had no choice but to hit the second ‘MotoX’ kicker to have even a glimmer of hope of making the podium. Lars Oesterle, now in TTR World No. 208 was completely aware of the fact and threw down a sick line, with a FS 7 off the first kicker and a BS 5 Mute over the gap sending him right into the lead of the pack. Second place rider Stefan Fankhauser who is now TTR World No. 110 from Austria didn’t back down with a sick BS 7 into silky smooth BS rodeo. Matevz Pristavec, who stomped a BS 7 Nose and a BS 3, completed the podium trio.

Top 10 results from the Absolut Spring Battle
Lars Oesterle GER
Stefan Fankhauser AUT
Matevz Pristavec SLO
Robert Wallner AUT
Seppe Smits BEL
Per Loken NOR
Christoph Schaidreiter AUT
Sondre Hylland NOR
Martin Sandberg SWE
Wolle Beer AUT