Sixth place! My best Swisspower Cup result yet! True, the start list wasn’t as long as they have been, but I’m pleased with how it turned out. It looks like I have to start aiming for top five now instead of top 10!

The start was fast uphill and I struggled to stay at the front, but my legs didn’t let me. The front three distanced themselves right away on the climb and I tried to keep Bettina Schmid (Fischer-BMC) in my sights. Fabienne had a super fast start and it took me a while to catch her on the first climb. I felt Martina on my back wheel and she was perhaps a little too eager to stay there. She buzzed my wheel and ended up crashing on the climb! I felt bad, but I swear it wasn’t my fault!

I focused on maintaining a good rhythm and a powerful cadence on the climbs, and staying smooth in the technical singletrack. It was slick in the trails, with lots of roots, which made it hard to keep up momentum. I got kicked around a lot, but I tried to stay relaxed. I saw that everyone was having the same problem, so if I kept my cool, I could make up several seconds.

After the first lap, I was in eighth place. I managed to reel in two women on the second lap and then maintained my position throughout the race. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough pep in my legs to make up the gap to fifth spot. I would have loved to pull off a top five result! Women kept trying to come up from behind me, so I knew I couldn’t relax. I had to hold them off by staying strong on the long climbs and riding clean on the descents.

After her crash on that first climb, Martina jumped back on her bike and rode strongly. She climbed like a mountain goat yesterday! I kept seeing her behind me when I looked over my shoulder. She finished eighth and Fabienne was 10 th. Way to go team! All three of us in the top 10! I’m currently ranked fourth overall, only five points behind third. Fabienne is in sixth in the overall classification and Martina moved up to 14 th. Lookin’ good, girls!

Nico also delivered his best Swisspower Cup result yesterday, with 43 rd place. Nice work!

Thanks to Andri for the feeding, chauffering, etc. and my HUGE fan club: Sepp, Sonya, Guido, Patricia, Manuel, Roman, Silvia, Beat, Marcel and Anita!