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Jun 02 2008
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Another World Cup, Another personal best... 		PDF Print E-mail
(3 votes)
Tuesday, 03 June 2008
Written by Burry Stander [185 hits]

This weekend saw the mountain bike world cup scene move to a brand new location.after a lengthy travel we found ourselves in vallnord andorra for the 4th round of the xc world cup.The country borders spain and is kinda like monaco in the mountains.

The race venue was situated on top of the highest peak around year and the race would start and finish at over 2000m.In our lead up preperations for the race,Todd and I could feel the serious lack of oxygen,especially me as im a beach boy.it turns out however that everyone else felt it too.

On the night before our race it started raining and pretty much only stoped an hour or two before our start.

Making the course slippery but fortunately not too muddy.Todd had the no 15 plate on the front of his zaskar and I had 17.This meant good starts for us both.After a fast first lap wellsy was in the lead group with me trailing a few seconds back in the next group.I found a realy good rythm early on and made my way to the back of the lead group by the end of lap 2.I sat there for a while recovering whilst the gap to the lone leader,Sauser was growing.Half way through the third lap I moved into 2nd and started turning the screws.I was pretty nervous at this stage fearing that I was going to burn myself too early.However I set an comfortable pace for myself and rode smooth on the technical stuff.I managed to close the gap to sauser from 40sec to 10 sec going into the penultimate lap.

I started feeling the fatigue a little and on one of the trickiest sections I wadded it up over the bars.I lost some time getting going again and also broke the lock out off my front fork.at this point I thought the race for second was over but as I started the next climb Sauser was running next to his bike with a rear flat.as we hit the top of the climb I drew level and passed Christoph as he pulled into the tech zone for a wheel change.apparently it was a quick one as it only gave me a 15 second lead with a lap and a half to go.

I had a sudden surge of energy and held the gap steady for awhile but as we started the last lap I started to feel the pressure and by halfway round the lap Sauser was breathing down my neck.He finnaly got by me with 2k to go and I just had to my best to try and hold him,which I did for awhile until the last climb where he pulled 9seconds into me....coming across the finish line in second was beyond my wildest dreams.

I had a sudden surge of energy and held the gap steady for awhile but as we started the last lap I started to feel the pressure and by halfway round the lap Sauser was breathing down my neck.He finnaly got by me with 2k to go and I just had to my best to try and hold him,which I did for awhile until the last climb where he pulled 9seconds into me....coming across the finish line in second was beyond my wildest dreams.The crowds realy are incredible when youre battling for the lead up front.
Wells rolled in for a career best 6th and with that we won the team standing for the day although 3 riders count.

We now look forward to some good training days here in the mountains and then its off to Scotland looking for a repeat.

cheers

the dart
 
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