The 2022 World Bike-OL Championships were held in Falun and Säter in Sweden. Falun is about a 2.5 hours’ drive northwest of Stockholm and is better known for cross-country skiing / ski jumping competitions than for mountain bike racing. But shortly before our World Championships, a Mountain Bike Eliminator World Cup has been held in the Nordic Arena Lugnet in Falun.
The terrain for the first two events in Säter was quite different from the terrain for the remaining three events in Falun. We started the World Cup week with the middle distance. The terrain was rather flat, but had some steep and sandy but short climbs. At the beginning I was a bit too hesitant and invested a bit too much in map work, when actually the most direct route was usually the fastest. The later world champion Krystof Bogar, who started 2min behind me, overtook me on a slightly different route, and definitely got rid of me when I had to tighten my trigger again, which had come loose. The later vice world champion, Samuel Pökälä, caught up with me a little later, and with him I rode the second half of the race together. Surprisingly, I led more than he did, and when he was in front, I had a hard time to keep up with him. But suddenly on the way to the 24th control, he did a mistake which I fortunately didn’t make and I could briefly get rid of him. But in the end, we reached the finish together, me in 18th place, he in 2nd.
Only one day later we had the relay, which partly took place in the final part of the day before. We had a medal to defend (bronze in 2021 in Finland), and started the race in exactly the same line-up and full of motivation with bib number 2 (since Russia was excluded). The start went relatively well for me, I was able to approach my controls cleanly despite diffuse forkings and was still in the lead after the first forking system. On the long straight asphalt road, I lost my sense for the distance and looked for my control too early, even turning around unnecessarily. So I lost contact with the leading group, the mistake cost me about one minute. But after that I was able to continue relatively cleanly. On the final loop I had a little trouble with the very dense path network. But I was able to hand over to Silas without making any major mistakes.
He made one bigger mistake, which many other athletes did as well. Nevertheless, he was able to make up some places and handed over to Simi in 7th place, together with Czech Republic 1. Simi had a dream race and rode the fastest time with a one minute (!) lead, making us not only medal winners, but also overtaking Bogar shortly before the arena passage and securing silver for us! What a ride!
The last competition before the rest day was the long distance. It took place in new terrain directly at the Event Centre. In a much hillier terrain, the aim was to find the fastest route and to follow it cleanly. The former was surprisingly easier than expected. From my point of view, there could have been more challenging route choice problems in this terrain. But the second point, the realization, turned out to be relatively challenging. The 1:15,000 map paired with many technically demanding trails didn’t really make it easy to navigate cleanly. I did a clean race without any mistakes and with only a few suboptimal routes and ended up in 11th place, only one second (!) behind the top 10 (after more than 2h race time). I am a bit disappointed with the result, as I would have hoped for a bit more in my favourite discipline. I also think that more demanding route choices would have suited me better. Nevertheless, 11th place is my best result at World Championships so far, and the top 10 was not far away…
After the rest day we continued with the sprint. The sprint is not exactly my favourite discipline, but on a good day anything is possible in this discipline. I started well into the first urban section. The transition to the forest section and the resulting change in navigation didn’t go so well for me. I had trouble finding my rhythm and could not really keep up in the very physical middle section, which was very fast and easy to navigate. In the end, I finished in 19th place, which was about what I expected.
The conclusion of the World Championships week was the mass start race. This race started relatively badly for me. A few metres after the start I was involved in a mass crash. A Finn tried to make up a lot of places very quickly in a relatively aggressive manner. The use of shouting and elbows ended in a crash directly in front of me which I couldn’t avoid and went down as well. Luckily me and my bike got away with some minor scrapes only, but I had to roll up the field from the very back afterwards and the motivation could have been better there. I never really got into the race and had to ride most of it on my own. Towards the end I was able to catch up with a larger group. In the last downhill through the numerous bike trails on the ski jump hill, I was able to get rid of some of this group, but others had been able to break away a bit before that on the climb. I finished in 20th place and also finished my last World Cup race in 2022 in the top 20! There was no lack of consistency, but I would have liked an exploit, especially in the long distance. The silver medal with the team more than makes up for this, and will be remembered forever!
