Racing continued at the highest level at the Sunshine Cup in Nalles with another superb second place from Nino Schurter. Kate Courtney in P7, Lars Forster in P8 and Andri Frischknecht in P19 rounded up the successful Italian racing campaign.
Nalles, Italy. Only five days after the great show on the island of Elba, the next stop of the Internazionali d’Italia was at the Sunshine Cup in Nalles, Alto Adige. For the first time this year the complete XCO racing scene was reunited. In the men’s race no less than 240 riders lined up, including all of the top 12 from the UCI world ranking list. A pre-World Cup show-down as you would wish for was on the menu.
Imagery: Kifcat
With the racing calendar still quite reduced due to pandemic restrictions in place, the Internazionali d’Italia and the Sunshine Cup offered a great setup to race and fine tune for the World Cup season to start next month. Pretty much the complete XCO scene was eager to line up for an occasion like this one. This is great in one way, but also brought the capacity of this climbers course to it’s limits. Very few passing possibilities favored the ones starting up front like Nino. Others like Kate, Lars and Andri became victims of their high number plates.
First lap of the men’s race was far from ideal for the SCOTT-SRAM squad. Nino started well, but crashed on the loose track. Luckily he was back on track quickly and still part of the bigger leading group with all the top riders.
Imagery: Kifcat
Lars and Andri on the other hand were 4 minutes into the race already one minute down in 36th and 37th. Moving up was quite a mission impossible. Having the legs and riding smart they both made the best out of the situation gaining position by position whenever possible. In particular Lars showed an impressive race charging his way into the top ten, making clear that his performance was worth more than his 8th place finish. Andri also moved up steadily through the field ending up in solid P19.
The race in the front saw attacks from Matthias Flückiger, Henrique Avancini and Ondrej Cin, but non of them were succesfull. Nino meanwhile was hiding his cards and remained present in top position. Two laps to go the large leading group started to fall apart. After successfully dropping Avancini, it came down to a battle against Swiss Matthias Flückiger, who managed to stay ahead in an impressive finale. Like earlier in the week on Elba, Nino crossed the line in 2nd, only 4 seconds behind the vice world champion of 2019.
Nino Schurter
8x World Champion, 2020 European Champion & Olympic Champion
SCOTT-SRAM MTB Racing
Women’s Race
Imagery: Kifcat
At the finish line it was a respectable 7th place, which was not quite representative for the strong performance Kate showed considering the circumstances. She is grateful about the way she made her way up. Another step towards the main goals of this season: Just like she is saying “sharpening the knives for the World Cup.”
This coming weekend the gun goes off at the Oetztaler Mountain Bike Festival in Haiming, Austria. Again a hors category race with top competition. Stay tuned!
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