The 2018 Changchun Jingyuetan Forest Mountain Bike Marathon was held as scheduled and went smoothly. Russian Evgenii Vitmanovskii grabbed the lead and won the mens 60km race, while Chinese Jiangna Shan took the womens crown in the 60km category with a slight advantage.
Todays temperature was perfect for the race, but after three consecutive days of rainning, the track at Jingyuetan Park had become very muddy, which also upset many participants who wanted to stand on the podium. It made the race more dramatic. In the beginning, Russian Evgenii Vitmanovskii, who a few years ago took a podium spot in the Genghis Khan MTB, already went solo. Guangwei Yu, the champion of the 2016 and Kuanjie Feng and Kui Wei , the Chinese mountain bike masters, formed a three-member group. The three did not hurry to chase the Russian. Instead, they followed their own pre-race strategy, and aimed to distribute their physical strengths as reasonably as possible so as to be able to attack later.However, everyone underestimated the strength of the Russian.Evgenii is not only very capable of off-road sections, but also has an amazing ability on the road. He was also sixth in the GC of the 2016 Colorful Yunnan International Granfondo Cycling Festival. The Russian was very fast on the paved Lake Road in Changchun. When the three Chinese chasers finally reacted, Evgenii was too far away and out of sight. After the first lap, Kuanjie Feng tried hard to catch the Russian, but Guangwei Yu was not so lucky. He fell down on the first lap because of the wet and slippery road in the forest. He had to watch the the two riders in the front of him fly away.In the end, Vitmanovskii took the victory with a lead of 3 minutes, Kuanjie Feng was second, and Guangwei Yu third with a gap of nearly 11 minutes behind. Kui Wei was fourth. Ken Cheng, the popular rider from HongKong, did not initiate the pursuit after analyzing the strength of the four riders in the front, but completed the race at his own pace, ranking fifth.
In the womens competition, Jiangna Shan from Beijing was a first timer to participate in this event. Years of training and rich experience in the competition allowed her to pass the first lap of 30 km in just one hour and 34 minutes. However, after the start of the second lap, the forest track became more muddy and slippery, she also had to go down and walked on some sections. Xueli Wang , who has participated in the Jingyuetan event many times and won the 2016 race, believes that this year was the most muddy track ever. She caught up with Shan after the second lap and kept her position. When they reached the finish line, Shan took the lead in launching an attack, but Wang followed closely. Still, Shan won the womens race and Wang was second with a slight gap of 19 seconds. Chinese Jing Yang returned to the finish line by 11 minitues behind.
The natural beauty of the Jingyuetan Park, the vast forest landscape and the lush grassland are also the reasons why many riders have participated in many times for this event. Nordic Ways sincerely thanks everyone for their support and participation in the event. Congratulations to all the participants to challenge their success and see you next time.
