Some of you know some of you don’t but anyway I stayed at home the last weeks and didn’t go to Canada to race there the 2 world cups. I thought about it very long and at the end I found it would be better to stay here and train for Schladming and save some money. I will move out soon in my new apartment and yes that will cost me lots of Euros and I should better save some money to be able to race the next season. I think the World financial crisis will hit the athletes a lot or has already because i guess the marketing/sponsoring budget will be cut of as first. So yes I stayed in lovely Austria and trained here. I went to Schladming and to Wagrain.
It was a cloak and dagger operation. Because at 10 p.m. I read on the downhill page that the bike park Wagrain is organizing a race and the first price is the Gravity Season Card. For everybody who doesn’t know what this is. With this card you can ride in 5 big bike parks the whole year for free. It cost about 320 Euros. So apart from winning this card I was even keener to race my bike and present my sponsors. So I packed all my stuff in the night. Stood up at 4 a.m. left at 5 and drove 4 hours there. But just half an hour before I arrived I got so tired that I realized uiuiui you will fall asleep soon so I drove to the side and slept. It took me maybe one minute…zZzZzZzZ…after this nap I drove on and got in a massive traffic jam…Massive 35 km. it was caused by tunnel work and just 100 before my highway exit it stopped to move. So yes I used the time to have a second breakfast, get changed in my riding gear and watched kids playing football between the cars and rolling with little scooters. After nearly one hour the cars start to roll again and luckily far enough so that I could exit. In Wagrain I had enough time to train and the track wasn’t very long either about a 2min track.
The most dangerous or trickiest part of the whole race was to get on the start box. just a small ladder was leaning against the 3 meter high wooden box and you had to carry your bike up with you. But everybody managed that. The race was a mix of two competitions. In your first run you had to race against the time and in your second run you had to style over obstacles. So both runs got counted. I won both competitions in my class and got this special card. I was satisfied and the whole weekend no even one rain drop, which is really seldom in this area of Austria. Jason and his bike crew were very happy about the event and that it worked all well and I was also happy to see some friends again. To sum it up it was a nice race day.
In the same evening I drove to Schladming to train there the next day and also see the free caster live streaming from the world cup in Bromont in the evening. i watched it in this restaurant/pub/disco local but image listen to „I am looking for freedom“ from David Hasselhoff and seeing Fabien Barel riding down a rock garden. That’s the worst ever. I asked and begged the bar man for turning the original sound on, the Rob Warner commentator voice, but he was not willing to do that because he said the other guest (the local was empty, apart from the mountain bike riders)got disturbed by the voice…. Okay so I went to the apartment of the Schladming bike crew P2 and asked if I could watch there at least the 4x on their laptop…But hmm the 4 X starts at 1 a.m. and everybody felt a sleep before including me. The next day the sun was shining again and I felt very good on my bike. The Schladming track is and will always be one of the best in the world and it’s always a challenge to go fast and stay smooth on this track. From the top to the bottom you are on the gas,your brake discs get blue and your upper arms are pumped. That’s Schladming.
