Date of birth: July 17, 1989
Nationality: Germany
Height: 179 cm
Weight: 61-63 kg
Hobbies: Family, cooking/baking, nature, reading
Barbara Benko, who goes by “Barbi”, doused her competitors even as a child. That was mostly due to the fact that she loved water at the tender age of three years, and competed in many swim competitions in her youth.
“I loved being in the water and did a swim class when I was only three years old. As I got older, I competed at many swim competitions. Swimming is huge in Hungary, we are very proud of our Olympic medal winners and World Champions. But I still got bored with it fairly quickly.” Barbi comes from a very athletic family, her Mother is a physical therapist and her Father was a track star who today owns two bicycle shops and coaches the National Team. That’s how all roads led to sports for Barbi.
After a short excursion into basketball, she found MTB and knew after her first training that this would end up being her sport. A few short weeks later, she participated in her first competition and won – her Dad as her coach right there with her.
Her first competition happened to be the National Championships in the U11 age bracket! The father-daughter combo traveled together on countless very successful MTB trips until Barbara moved up to U23.
As a Junior, Barbi was very successful as well, which is even more impressive because the almost 30-time Hungarian Champion graduated from high school at that time. She always realized that life after sports was very important. She wanted to go to college and build a foundation for her career afterwards. She started to study medicine, but realized that it was not possible to combine her medical studies with a professional mountain biking career. So she switched to optics and mountain biking stayed Barbara’s number one.
Aside from her personal highlight - having finally won all three National Champion Titles in XCO, CycloCross and Road in the same year, Barbi is not done yet: “I am highly motivated and my XCC World Cup podium finish this year made me realize that I can further leverage my potential with the professional help of my team backing me up! I am very much looking forward to next year and still have some goals on my agenda which I want to achieve!” says Barbara and wants to assist the younger girls on the team with her wealth of experience.
6x German Champion (3x Young talent XCO, 2x Elite XCE, 1x Elite XCM)
German Champion XCM 2020
Runner-up European Champion U23 XCM 2009
4th place World Championships XCE 2013
3rd place World Cup XCE 2013
7th place Overall World Cup XCE 2013
4th place Absa Cape Epic 2019
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