15. August 2019

European Championships – Darfo Boario Terme

Here some keywords: National-team, selection, Italy, new racetrack, technical, challenging, hard, hot, dehydration, result

Last Saturday I participated at the Cross-Country European Championships in Darfo Boario Terme, Italy. I was very proud to be selected and to be allowed to wear the jersey with the Swiss cross again. The previous days I trained on the challenging and technical racetrack. He was built completely new. The track is physically and mentally very exhausting. Again and again there are very steep uphill’s and really technical sections. It was so important to be totally focused on the track during the race. At 03.00 pm I finally started. I had a quite good start loop. In the second lap I did a stupid mistake during a technical uphill. My mountainbike hit a stone and my shifter displaced completely. I had to fix it and lost a lot of time and some positions. It was very important to drink enough during the race. Riding by over 30°C on a steep track where you cannot recovery were really hard conditions. Some riders dehydrated, made mistakes and accidents. In the third lap I finally found my own rhythm and I could ride a constant pace. I could ride everything properly and I never had to run. Unfortunately I was taking out after the fourth of five laps because of the 80% rule. Although I was very happy about a lot of things but I didn’t reach my top 15 ranking goal. Now I totally focus myself to the UCI MTB World Cup in Mont Sainte-Anne (CAN) which takes place next Sunday.