© Philippe Fayard, AM sports

Dijon, 10 June 2012: Bart Swings (BEL, Powerslide Matter World) takes home the victory from the World Inline Cup race today in Dijon, France. This time his sprint was too strong to stand for Yann Guyader (FRA, EOSKATES IDEEprint), who finished second. In the women's race Natalie Barbotin (FRA) got beat by Rennes-winner Jana Gegner (GER, EOSKATES IDEEprint).

The weather report had already foreseen some difficult conditions and the skaters from all around the globe took advantage of the refurbished but partly wet course at the Place Wilson. Already in the second lap a group of four skaters broke-away, but with being involved with an athlete each EOSKATES and Powerslide both did not want to do anything about it. This finally left Michael Achermann, Nicolas Iten and Severin Widmer (SUI, Swiss-Skate-Team) with no other options: they worked all the day back, but had to realize that they lost too much power in the pursuit. They needed to leave Swings, Guyader and Ewen Fernandez (FRA, Poserslide Matter World) with the glory at the end and Bart Swings with a new track record of 59:15,2 min.

Next weekend the World Inline Cup stops at Ostrava for another Class 1 race that is the fourth of six stops before it enters a small break. The final will be at Jeonju (KOR) in September to crown the 2012 World Inline Cup Champions.