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BACK AT THE WORLD CUPS

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After I retired from trials I thought I would never be competing at a world cup ever. However, this changed when I was at Vuelta Ibiza with Andreu, Irene and Amparo. Amparo told me there was an XCE World Cup in Barcelona, I’ve heard about XCE before but Amparo explain me how it works.

 

4 riders and 2 laps around a 45-1 minute circuit, the first two go through the next heat and the 3rd and 4th are eliminated, and I thought, why not? I have been training explosibity for all my life for trials, or maybe I did something good in trials because I was explosive, anyway, I always had that fast rush, that not lasted long 😂.

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QUALI

All the riders do a timed lap around the track and that decides the order for the heats. As I didn’t have any previous ranking I was the third one to do it. I was nervous and I did a couple of mistakes, however I pushed as much as I could. We had some time to practise the circuit and I really appreciated, in trials we could never practise and it was a huge mental game. Not this time, however, after practise, there were a couple of places I still haven’t 100% figure out how to properly do it. 

 

Turns out my quali lap wasn’t bad at all. P8, however, there was 7 more riders in the same second, so everything was really tight.

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1/8 FINALS

Now everything changes, its not about time, its about finishing 1st or 2nd to go to the next heat. At the start line, there is one person holding you, so you can start pedalling as soon as the ring sounds. Standing there, prepared ( or kind of ) my heartbeat was higher than ever, focused hundred percent on the sound of the ring. The ring sounds, and the feeling is that everything but the track and the other 3 riders, disappear. I could manage to win that one, so I moved to the next heat.

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1/4 FINALS

Same feeling as before, started as hard as I could and I was second after the first turn, I followed the first one and then we realised the other two weren’t coming, we were lucky, they had a mechanical problem so we relaxed and classified for the next one.

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1/2 FINALS

At the sound of the ring I pushed as the other rounds buy my legs were already tired, turned into the first turn and an Austrian rider crashed in front of me and luckily I could avoid him and kept riding. I tried to chase the first and the second but there were too strong, I couldn’t keep up and ended up 3rd. That wasn’t the end, I had to ride the Small final, to decide the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th positions.

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SMALL FINAL

I was exhausted before start, however I tried, I tried with everything I had, but before the half of the first lap I realised I had nothing to fight for, my legs were empty, and the other guys were so much stronger than me, so I finished 8th.

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I didn’t know what to expect in terms of results but I knew I would enjoy it. What I didn’t know is that I would enjoy it so much and with a little bit of training I could be fighting for better positions. Fast forward two weeks I am already looking for flights to Palangkaraya, Indonesia, for the next round of the UCI XCE World Cup…