World Cup #4 in Champery, Switzerland

Champery and the area of Portes du Soleil is probably one of Europe’s most beautiful places, year long.

This area stretches itself between France and Switzerland and is a ski heaven in winter and a freeride bike park heaven in summer. Amazing views, mountain peaks, small Euro-style ski resort town and lots of good produce – cheese, meat and, of course, chocolate…

Of course, as a European vacation location it is a given that restaurant dishes are tiny, prices are expensive and road directions are awful… but nothing compares to the sweet mountains and the sounds of cow bells!

Combine this beauty with the Swiss world class level of mountain bike racing and you got one of the best world cup races in the series. It felt more like world championships, so many spectators, teams, riders, promoters… just incredible!

Race course was super technical – sweet forest trails with lots of roots and rocks all over, and all are muddy and slippery as hell. No climbing though, only two very short and steep climbs. It was pretty much riding from one technical spot to the next all race long. Pretty awesome, and the course was a big attraction for amateur riders even after race was over.

After Israel nationals I had to give an easy week for my knee to heal, on top of a total week off before nationals… so I had only had few short easy rides within two weeks prior this world cup. Usually if you add some short hard efforts to that kinda schedule it would be a great taper, but my knee couldn’t handle that.

First lap in world cups is so important for positioning, yet it is so sketchy – people are crashing everywhere trying to gain every spot possible. I guess the first lap is really fun to watch as a spectator – the pack is still all together, lots of elbows, swearing, pushing, wheel touching and such.

After a good first lap that I managed to gain a few spots from my call up position (halfway through the 200 men field) and hanged on to around 70ish position, I started feeling my legs closing in on me, and I was giving away so much time to fatigue in general and especially on the steep climbs. I guess getting back from an injury to a world cup isn’t the best thing, yet I got some precious experience and great muddy training.

One thing though that I learned here is that I became a little bit Americanized… to the matter that I expect everybody to speak my language, I’m not even talking about Hebrew of course, I’m talking about English… getting along here with English is tricky. Most people don’t speak English, some do speak but don’t want to talk in English and few have perfect English. I still need to work my accent here by saying “Bonjour” without sounding like a total tourist, and getting a wired look…

Now…back home to get the legs going again and turn the game on for World Cup finals in Windham before hitting the World Champs the next week!

-Rotem