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‘Hometown Hero’ Nino Schurter defends MTB World Championships title

  • Ron 

Right out of the gate Nino Schurter (SUI) left no doubt about his intensions to win gold on home soil. Powering up the first climb the defending UCI World Champion, current overall UCI World Cup winner and Olympic gold medalist led Anton Cooper (NZL) and Henrique Avancini (BRA) into Heidi’s Hell. Behind Schurter, fellow favorite for the win, Mathieu van der Poel (NED), had to start out of the second row and got stuck in the chaotic traffic of the first climb, loosing 30 valuable seconds.

In an effort to spread the field early, Schurter charged hard and opened a gap of 12 seconds to a ten-man-strong chase group. Entering the second lap two-time UCI U23 World Champion Gerhard Kerschbaumer (ITA) managed to shake the pack and catch up to Schurter on top of the first long climb. In the following laps, Kerschbaumer, who beat Schurter to win the UCI World Cup in Andorra earlier in the year, and the Swiss home town hero worked together to distance the chase pack by sharing lead duties in keeping up an incredibly high pace. Meanwhile behind the leaders, Mathieu van der Poel started to work himself through the field in an effort to join the fight at the front.

Van der Poel eventually moved into third and left the chase pack behind thanks to a monumental effort on the grueling climb at the beginning of the fourth lap. Steadily closing in on the leading duo, the Dutch Cyclo-Cross star, was only 12 seconds behind Schurter and Kerschbaumer to start the fifth lap. The two leaders were however not at all interested in becoming a trio, so true to the saying ‘two is company, three is a crowd’, Schurter and Kerschbauer upped the already high pace by another notch.

Spurred on by the chants, cow bells and chainsaws of the large and incredibly loud crowd that was lining every centimeter of the demanding track, Schurter and Kerschbaumer battled hard without any one being able to shake off the other. It wasn’t until the final meters of Lap 7 that an attack showed any effect, when Schurter managed to open a small gap on Kerschabumer along Mitas Muddy Climb. Driven on by his home crowd, that small gap was all Schurter needed. Sensing that Kerschbaumer was unable to come back, the noise of the Swiss fans carried Schurter through the last lap. Entering the final straight, Nino Schurter was welcomed by the deafening roar of his home crowd to claim his seventh UCI World Championship individual title. Kerschbaumer narrowly took silver after a hard fought race, van der Poel, who had spent a lot of energy making up for his bad start, managed to hold onto bronze. Henrique Avancini and Florian Vogel (SUI) rounded out the Top 5 in fourth and fifth respectively.

“It was amazing to race here on home ground. I live 25 minutes from here, so it really was a home race for me,” Schurter told reporters. “The atmosphere was crazy, the people went nuts and were cheering so hard for me. It was an amazing feeling. I went into the race with quite a bit of pressure and actually didn’t have the best legs today. I could still feel the Team-Relay. I already half expected a sprint with Gerhard, but then I saw that he started to make mistakes in the technical root sections and I was able to open a gap. It was an amazing feeling to win in front of such a crazy crowd. I would say these were the best World Championships we have ever had in mountain biking.“

“It was a great race today and this year was amazing for me,” added second place finisher Gerhard Kerschbaumer. “I came second three time in the UCI World Cup and won once. It’s incredible to win silver here today. Nino was stronger than me. Nino is Nino. With two laps to go I lost time in the technical sections, he attacked in the climb and I wasn’t able to follow. It has been a fantastic week here in Switzerland, the crowd was crazy loud.“

“I think I had quite a good race all-in-all. I think I was stuck behind Marotte, who couldn’t get into his pedal fast enough and lost a lot of positions in the first lap. I just stuck to my own pace though. I am a bit disappointed that I wasn’t in the race for Gold at an earlier stage. I was always stuck behind some of the guys and when I came closer to Nino and Gerhard, they were really accelerating. It was pointless to try and close the gap and I think securing Bronze was the right thing to do. The atmosphere was something special here today. I think this will be a day Nino remembers for a long, long time,” Mathieu van der Poel concluded.

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