Two Elite Wins in Riga: Kristers Apels and Vineta Petersone Take the Riga Grand Prix

Two Elite wins on the same day, on the same team, in the same city. On Saturday at the Riga Grand Prix, Kristers Apels won Elite Men and Vineta Petersone won Elite Women. Sunday at the Riga Cup they both backed it up with second.

Riga, Latvia, September 12 and 13

The Riga Grand Prix ran Saturday. Kristers took the Elite Men main ahead of Magnus Dyhre and Jakob Sardag, the two Danes who have been racing the European Cup all season, with Edgars Langmanis, Martins Emils Treimanis, Karlis Pedraudzis and Davis Janis Elbrets filling out the gate. Vineta won Elite Women over Veronika Monika Sturiska and Adrija Darta Silina.

Sunday was the Riga Cup on the same track. Dyhre got the better of Kristers this time and Kristers finished second, with Sardag third again. Sturiska turned the tables on Vineta and Vineta took second. Two days of racing, two wins and two seconds between them. Not a bad weekend at home.

The domination of the F1x has started

A week ago Kristers stood on his first Elite podium, third in the rain at the European Cup finals in Norway. Seven days later he won an Elite Men main outright. Nineteen years old, first season out of Junior, and he is now beating riders who have been racing Elite for years.

He did it on the Vision F1x in the 1dea Team Edition colorway, black with Hi Vis, Cyan and Red accents. The F1x is the frame we built to take the monocoque carbon chassis as far as the material allows. Toray M40X and M46X fiber, Nano Alloy resin, a T47 threaded bottom bracket in the Pro sizes and up. Stiffer at the bottom bracket, stiffer at the dropouts, faster off the gate than anything we have made. Kristers is one of the first riders in the world racing it at the Elite level, and the results are starting to show up in the order we hoped they would. Podium one week. Win the next.

It is the same frame Kye Whyte and Oli Moran race. If you want to understand what changed between the F1 and the F1x, read Vision F1 vs Vision F1x.

Vineta and the Vision F1, four years in

Vineta's win came on the Vision F1, a Pro XL in Prime Blue. That frame has been her go-to bike for the last four years. Two Olympic Games on it, Tokyo and Paris. Four straight UCI Pump Track World Championship podiums and near-podiums on it. World Cup mains on it. She knows exactly what it does under her, and on Saturday that showed. She led Elite Women home in front of a Latvian crowd that has watched her race since she was five.

The Vision F1 was the first monocoque carbon BMX race frame in the world. A rider at Vineta's level choosing to stay on it season after season, when she could ride anything, tells you more about the frame than we could.

The Latvian program

Latvia is a small country that keeps producing big BMX riders. Māris Štrombergs won two Olympic gold medals and is still on the Supercross BMX Factory Team. Vineta is a two-time Olympian. Kristers was European Junior Champion last year and is now winning Elite mains. Three Latvians, three generations of the same program, all on Supercross frames. Saturday was the first time two of them won Elite classes at the same race. We do not expect it to be the last.

Congratulations, Kristers and Vineta.

Full results are on FATBMX for the Riga Grand Prix and the Riga Cup. Follow Kristers at @kristersapels, Vineta at @vinetapetersone, and the team at @SupercrossBMX. Shop Vineta's bike.