Burry Stander Lands on the Podium in the Dalby Forest
Specialized Factory Racing | April 26, 2010
The week leading up to the first UCI World Cup for the 2010 was all about a successful Sea Otter campaign in USA followed by an interesting few days of Volcanic ash disrupted travel plans...
Our departing flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt was one of two allowed out that day and once we touched down the chaos began. Our connection had been canceled and it was now a case of getting to Dalby Forest in time for the jet lag to ease and the riders to have sufficient time out previewing the course. It was eventually decided that the safest option would be to hire two vehicles and make the 1500km journey through the ferry crossing at Calais to Dover, England.
This meant we had some very tired riders holding out through the night but eventually turned out to be the best decision as we were one of the first teams on site and could get race day preparation underway.
Elite Ladies - Lene shows early season form and plenty of character
For any rider wanting to challenge for the victory a good start was one of the essentials, unfortunately Lene was still feeling a little sluggish after a hard few days of travel and got off to a slower than usual start. Completing the first start loop she was down in about 30th position with an elite group already having formed up front.
With less climbing than usual and lots of singletrack, passing opportunities were few and far between but Lene continued to find her legs and fight her way through the field making use of any mistakes made by the riders in front of her. She progressively made her way passed more and more riders and with one lap remaining in 15th position she set the fastest lap of the day to finish her race in 10th overall, 1min52 sec on current world champion Irina Kalientieva.
Elite Men- Burry takes the Stumpjumper 29'er to the podium
In what turned out to be one of the more thrilling races to watch Burry Stander claimed third position behind current World champion Nino Schurter and former World and Olympic champion Julien Absalon. As with the womens race a fast start was essential to up front and challenge for the win. Coming through lap 1 of 6, Burry was sitting in the top 10 with Ralph Naf characteristically charging hard off the front with some big names in tow.
Burry said: " the first few laps the guys were pushing really hard up front and I was happier to just sit in and find my legs"
Once he had "found" his legs he moved to the front of the race and created what was to be the race winning group. Putting in a hard surge only Julien Absalon and Nino Schurter could follow and for the remaining laps these three would trade blows making for brilliant racing and great spectating for the few thousand spectators that had made their way out for the day. Burry led the group for most of the way till Absalon attacked with a lap to go taking Schurter with him. With the gap at about 10 seconds Burry was unable to close it and Nino Schurter once again beat Julien Absalon in what was almost a photo finish.
Christoph Sauser was unlucky on the day as another rider crashed into his rear wheel breaking a few spokes and forcing an untimely wheel change and setting him back into around 35th position, he managed to carry on and ride himself back into 23rd while Todd Wells managed through some of the knee pain he had been facing in the week for a 19th place finish.
