The penultimate round of this year’s FIM European Euduro Championship headed to Burg in Germany, 114km from Berlin, the capital city of Germany last weekend, which saw Aussie’s Jess Gardiner once again extending her championship lead and is now staring down the barrel of wrapping up her first European Enduro Championship.
After finishing with a 1-2 result at the second round in Paikuse, Estonia in July, Gardiner managed to claim the overall victory on both days, which now sees the 24-year-old winning five races from six starts aboard her Yamaha WR250F.
Just like in Paikuse, the course in Burg was quite ‘plain’, without mountains and uphill sections. Nevertheless, the course was mostly sandy and in the woods very bumpy with a lot of tree roots to navigate throughout the two days.
In what was a “super tough” opening day according to Gardiner on the Saturday, as the trials and tests were really rough, this was still not enough to stop her bolting to victory by beating Finland’s Marita Nyqvist by 5min34.83.
While rain did play havoc for most of the day for Gardiner, except for her first and last test, and throw in a crash in the final test, she still managed to win every stage throughout the whole day to stamp her authority on the championship. On top of that, Gardiner, who was racing as a full privateer, copped a one minute penalty at the last time control for coming in before the final work period.
“I felt like I rode really well today, especially in the sandy area,” said Gardiner who won with a total time of 1hr30min52.85.
“The sand was so dark, that with a bit of rain it started to become a bit too slick,” explained Gardiner.
“The trial time (transport sections) were really tightly timed, as every one of my competitors lost time today. I basically rode the trials as a special test and tried to get a quick breath before going into the tests directly.
I never had more then 1-2 minutes rest at most controls,” added Gardiner.
