Peterson’s fourth place in the European Championship in BMX cycling

Athletes of the elite, U-23, junior and senior youth groups competed for prizes at the European BMX Championship on Saturday.

Pētersone, who represents “Silva ziķerus” on a daily basis, won the third, fifth and fourth place in the preliminaries, which gave her a place in the grand final. In it, the student of coach Ārtas Kātiņas won the fourth place.

Olympic champion Bethany Shriver from Great Britain became the European champion.

On Saturday evening, Zadraks, an athlete from “Marupes BMX club” and “AKSSC Valmiera”, won the silver medal in the junior competition in a dramatic fight.

In the junior boys’ group, both Kārlis Pedraudzis (“Tālava VSS”) and Zadraks, who won the European Cup in Valmiera, made it to the semi-finals. As both started in the same semi-final race, Zadraks took the fourth place in a fierce battle, being the last to enter the final, while Pedraudzim took the seventh position.

In the final, coach Mika Pukiš’s student Zadraks won the fourth position after the start.

In the first bend, the Swiss athlete in front of him fell. Zadrak, successfully avoiding the fall, moved up to third place and soon overtook the second-placed Italian rider as well. He was the fastest man on the track in the final part of the course and attacked the leader Markus Lett from Denmark in the final straight.

Even though Zadraks caught up with his competitor at the finish line, the Dane turned out to be a hair’s breadth faster.

Winning the second place is the biggest success in the Latvian BMX junior group in recent years.

For the second year in a row, Paula Kibare, representative of “BMX Rīga”/RRS, won the European Championship award. The student of coach Edžus Treimans confidently entered the finals in the G-16 group.

In the final, after the start, Kibare was in third place, where he also finished.

Treiman’s students from “BMX Rīga”/RRS won two more fourth places.

In the B-16 group, Edgars Langmanis, after winning the quarter-finals and semi-finals, fought fiercely for the third position after the start, but the podium remained unreachable this year.

The road to the final was not so smooth for Krister Apel. He finished fourth in both the Round of 16, Quarterfinals and Semifinals. In the final, Apels was not in the top three, although corrections were made by a fall that eliminated four competitors from the fight for medals, with Apels finishing in fourth place.

In the first half of the day, Latvian young drivers won five awards in the European “Challenge” competition.

The victory went to Bruno Vanag (B-11) and Emma Shvalkovska (G-7), silver awards – to Raimo Soldan (B-9) and Ramona Bara (G-11), bronze – to Evelina Līkuma (G-10) and Renārs Režovski ( B-7).

The competition will end on Sunday.