UCI World Cup #4, Madrid ESP II

10th position in World Cup's fastest race

Madrid’s World Cup race was once again a super fast one, which meant we had to start this race off smart. When Näf and Absalon went off, I first tried to chase them down, but realized soon that none of the top riders of the large bunch I was sitting in would collaborate. If they didn’t want to spend some power why should I have been doing that on my own for them and try to close the gap?

In fast races only a small mistake or single stupid incident can kick you out of the game. We were with two teammates riding in this group, Marco Fontana and me. We were both feeling strong and wanted to play this right and achieve the podium in this race. Marco got handicapped by some spectator and crashed. He immediately lost contact to our group but was strong enough to chase us down again. I was happy to see him back in the group, but soon after I would make a mistake in shifting and got dropped. With Marco ahead of me fighting with some other riders for the last podium positions, it was the right thing to stay back and so I eventually finished 10th, but Marco got this season’s first WC podium for the team with his 4th place.

In fast races like Madrid the going gets rough easily. Racing becomes a continuing hard battle for positions with sometimes not-so-clean actions. Mountain biking remains an extreme sport and like this sometimes XC racing becomes a bit more like 4X racing, more often than some people would expect.