Albstadt World Cup – muddy treatment

That moment when I had to start writing again on my blog arrived and I can’t ignored it any longer. My season started later, but it was an awesome start because the first two races of the year were the World Cups from Albstadt and Nove Mesto. And I will be honest. For me World Cup racing are like the ecstasy of gold.

This year was a switch between the venues, having Albstadt first and one week later Nove Mesto. As now my family is bigger, having our almost 11 month’s old son Felix we had to plan the trip a bit more different than before. It took longer to drive to Germany but it ended up pretty well.

It was the same weekend when Cannondale launched the new F-Si and the new Lefty Ocho (the 8^th generation of Lefty forks). With this occasion I had the chance to meet even Jeremiah Boobar, one of the man behind this Lefty.

By the way, someone said something true: forks are for eating, Lefty’s are for racing.

Different weather there compared to Cluj, muddy and slippery but I had the chance to check the course and train on it preparing myself for worst case scenario but hoping for the best. I didn’t knew what to expect as I haven’t race this year but anything has to start from somewhere. The weather forecast was pretty bad but I’ve decided in the end not to run full mud tires as the course had sections with some crushed lime stone that was really slippery but at least helped not to have really deep mud.

I had a pretty safe start trying to avoid any crashed and to stay on the bike as much as possible. After the few couple of hundred of meters I’ve increased the pace and I tried to advance. Starting with the number 127, finishing on 123^rd isn’t quite a result, but on a course where a lot of living legends haven’t finished I am glad I was safe and sound in a race with great atmosphere and such a great public! Many thanks to all the Romanian who came here and cheered for me but also to the Cannondale employees! That’s why I enjoy these races so much!

At least the Cannondale Factory Racing guys pushed the new F-Si and Lefty Ocho to the max so Maxime Marotte ended 4^th, Mani Fumic 9^th and Henrique Avancing 17^th, keeping their 1^st position in team ranking! Remarkable job!

Of course that in the end it’s time to thank everyone who got involved in this great adventure but I will in the next post where I will talk about the race from Nove Mesto, because it will be a story a lot more interesting.

Cheers,

Vlad

Photo credits: Traian Olinici