Nationals at Dippach January 11th 2009
Written by Marc   

Cyclo-Cross Championships in Dippach: Yes I can!

 

Even if I had an excellent preparation for this championship (my husband Marc worked very hard on my bikes and my mind, even put together a spare bike, my son Fränz did two training units with me in order to show me tricks for the many turns in the lap), it was not evident that I could race to win. Both Christine [Majerus] and Nathalie [Lamborelle] are very strong riders ( 4th and 2th in the GP. Elsy Jacobs this year) and I didn’t know where to situate myself, because I hadn’t raced against either of them this season.

I decided not to attack right away and first take a look at how the others raced in the terrain. As the start was really slow, I did the asphalt part in my rhythm. At the end of that part, Christine took the lead and tried to get away while Nathalie went in in second place, but then she made a mistake in the first turn. There was space enough allowing me to pass her and follow Christine.


On the first passage on the finish line, Christine had an advantage of 2 or 3 seconds, but she got up to 10’’ in the first part of lap two. I didn’t panic though, as I was still not on the maximum of what I can do, and caught her back on the aspalted part of the circuit in the end of the second lap.

I stayed in her wheel, rested a bit, but the moment she made a small error in a turn, I rode a slight attack, just to see how strong she was and continued at 80% to 85% of my capacities until the end of the asphalt. Since I knew that it was very important to be in the first position once at the entrance of the field, I made an acceleration (just to keep her from passing me) and then put her under pressure by going fullspeed through the first turns of the lap, forcing her to concertrate really hard and eventually make a mistake. The result was that she lost her coolness and crashed before the passage under the second bridge. The only thing left to do was to keep my advantage and stay concenrated until I crossed one final time the finish line.


I’m really proud of this title, because I won it against a really strong concurrence and under the eyes of my direttore sportivo from team FENIXS (who stayed in Luxembourg in order to see this event and plan the road-season with my husband).


Nevertheless, I won’t forget to say that all the participants of this race, especially young Lisa Ferron (who suffered a lot on the frozen grounds), did well and remind everyone that the most important thing is to take part in the race and give all you got! [Trixys comment: Give it your best shot!]

Now, I’m looking forward to wear the red-white-blue jersey in the next world-cup races in Roubaix and Milano! (It looks a lot better with my blue Alan bikes than the green, doesn’t it? ;) )


Cheers,
Suzie

N.B: Thanks to my daughter Trixy for correcting my race-reports and sometimes giving them a personal touch! ☺