The race in Ilmenau, which has since become a classic, was born in 1996. In the first two years, the race was held from the Kickelhahn, one of the town's two local mountains. Most of the track led downhill on the hiking trail and, at absolute top speeds, destroyed 350 metres of altitude. The course was extreme and, by today's standards, quite dangerous. Not least for this reason, and because the reaction time of one or the other hiker was also tested before and after the race, a solution had to be found.

Sport has always been a priority in the university town in the Thuringian Forest, as some of the great winter athletes came from Ilmenau. So the decision-makers also had a thing for this new sport. The search for a solution was rather uncomplicated and it was found in the city forest on the Lindenberg, the second local mountain opposite. The terrain was almost perfect, with Alpine, former ski jumps, curling rink, tennis court and the historic bobsleigh run, it was an area of sport anyway, so a piece of forest was left out of cultivation and thus the race organisers had their playground.

Even the first race, with its not yet optimal use of the terrain, was a spectacle. Thousands of spectators welcomed the athletes as they flew straight into the former landing slope of the large ski jump. In the following years, the track was perfected more and more, with the use of parts of the over 100-year-old natural bobsleigh track, the bomb craters, which are not bomb craters at all, but simply subsidence from mining and the legendary wooden curve.

This monstrous berm after the landing slope was about 30 metres long, almost 2 metres high in the middle and felt vertical before it ended with a jump nearly one metre high. Speeds of up to 70 km/h were reached and the two-metre-high safety fence was put under a lot of strain. But the most spectacular jumps have always been those into the ski slope run-out, which for a few years now has been straight again as in the early days and allows distances of up to 25 metres.

The track, which is not really long at just over 1,500 metres and is prepared for the race every year, is now being redesigned for the 23rd time in this small piece of forest. The course builders offer new lines every year, although after ten years they thought they had found the non-plus-ultra. So far, they have never been wrong and thus the race has always been a magnet for international greats. The history of winners makes interesting reading, with names like Bas de Bever, Oscar Saiz, Britta Kobes, Anneke Beerten, Nick Beer and of course Antje Kramer and Marcus Klausmann.

By the way, there is no commercial organiser behind the whole thing. For a few years now, the race has been organised by ILRC e.V., previously by Racement and before that by RAD-ART racing. But actually the same people have always been behind it, certainly some are no longer there, but others have joined.

Ilmenau is definitely a must for every cycling enthusiast. The fact alone that Germany's star presenter Uwe Buchholz will once again reveal all his knowledge about the scene is worth the trip. He will certainly take the audience on a trip or two back to the past, when the Players Cup, the Locomotion Cup, the Bundesliga and the Mountainbike Rider Cup were held in Ilmenau before the era of the iXS series arrived in 2006. But even then, there were some highlights besides the iXS German Cup, for example with the European Cup in 2008 and 2010 or the German Championships in 2007, 2012, 2017 and 2022, which take place every five years.

For the 26th edition, there will also be something to do away from the race track, so that the days can end with music. Although there are no longer as many big evening events as there used to be, there will still be a framework for philosophising about the past two and a half decades in a relaxed atmosphere. It's certainly worth digging through the catacombs of memory. Some people will remember the legendary concerts at the Ilmenau swimming pool, for example in 1999 with Die Happy, 2000 with Yucca Spiders and 2002 with Such A Surge, each with about 2,000 visitors. Or the FMX shows in the finish area in 2004 and 2005.

Definitely legendary was also the Cannondale The Cut Slopestyle contest on the Alpine in 2006, so a pioneer even before the hype of this discipline. Other highlights of the supporting programme were certainly the concert with Yello Cap in the Stadtpark for the 15th anniversary in 2011 or the concert with Strong Bow for the 20th edition.

Ilmenau is something special and a highlight every year.