National Championships across the street and nothing else matters

“I Have a Dream” is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist and Baptist minister, Martin Luther King Jr., during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963.

I also had a dream to have in Cluj the XCO National Championships and this year the stars aligned and with my friends Marius and Aurelian from Transilvania MTB we’ve managed to grab this and bring the best Romanian riders in Cluj. I really want it to write these words earlier but it seems that this year things are going as fast as I thought it would.

Anyway, let’s get back to the race. This should have been held last week end (23-24th of July) but instead it was decided to do it on 17-19th of June, shortening the organization time to a bit over 3 weeks. And there were a lot of things to do. But if we started the dance, we had to keep going.

Besides all these the very first Short Track National Championship in the history was going to be here.

We weren’t too many people involved and the time available wasn’t too much but (I think) we’ve done everything we could to deliver something cool for the Romanian mountain biking community. We had such a great support from our families and friends and it meant a lot because we couldn’t do anything without them. Also RedBull Romania came out to cool us down, keeping us in cool shade and without any doubt the wings to keep everything on track.

All the big names were here, including Vlad Dascalu (Trek Factory Racing XC) who’s on 2nd place right now in the world ranking, very close to his first Elite World Cup win and with a lot of chances for a medal at the World Championships. The best teams as I said, the most important people from the Romanian Cycling Federation, even from the National Antidoping Agency came here. It was mind-blowing.

Of course, we had some setbacks and made some rookie mistakes that could have been avoided. I didn’t want to have a learning process right at such an event but any kind of ass kick is a step forward.

Regarding the races I wasn’t able to deliver the performances that I hoped for. I left all my energy on the other side and didn’t had much thing left for the race. P7 at XCC and P8 at XCO @ Elite what I think it’s gonna be my last appearance in the Elite field at the National Championship. Even though I didn’t performed, man, having the family on the other side of the tape and all the people and friends cheering like I was leading the World Cup meant so much for me that simply brought me tears of joy. I’d wish my mother was here to witness all these. Back in the days at our local races she was simply running to cheers. Vlad Dascalu won both XCC and XCO titles so it will be really cool to see the National Champ jersey in the front row of the World Cups!

I still love racing as much as I did back in the early 2000’s, when we were a handful of riders and I will still race in the future, but somehow I need to reinvent myself, to built the trust I’ve lost after this year World Cup in Nove Mesto. I also want to give back even more than I did before to my local community and built something that will last many years from now.

Many thanks to everyone, grateful for everything and everyone who made this possible, to my family, friends and sponsors.

Many thanks also to everyone who put any kind of effort into this event. We, as a family, as a group made it possible. Also grateful to have the trust from our Romanian Cycling Federation for their trust. I hope that the event was as close as possible to their expectations.

Cheers to a brighter future,

Vlad