Weinfelden Relay and Marathon.

Hi Skaters,

Last weekend was a first-time WIC race in Weinfelden, Switzerland. First off though there was a relay held on Friday night. The relay skaters raced for their pro team. The top eight teams in the WIC went directly into the semi-final, and then the top three teams in each semi went to the final, plus one wild card team that could be added by the WIC organisation, to make — believe it or not — a 7-team final!!!

Needless to say the straightaway where the changes took place was like a battle zone. This was a very high-class relay. There were no less than 10 current and past World Champions spread over the teams. The final was pretty much full-on from the start as all the teams were fighting hard to be near the front to avoid any crashes.

Going into the last rotation of skaters my team, Athleticum-Rollerblade hit the front. Then going into the final lap of the race, my teammate Raphael Pflug put me in first position. I held the lead until the last corner when a flying Jorge Cifuentes (World Inline Center) passed me up the inside for the win.

The results were:
1st Matter World Inline Center
2nd Athleticum Rollerblade
3rd Citius Team Germany
4th TNT
5th Powerslide Phuzion
6th Sportvital Rollerblade
7th Zepto

Saturday was the marathon. It started and finished in the small town of Weinfelden. The 'village' where all the athletes were based was in the car park (parking lot) of the new banked track. The course was two 21km laps with two hills each lap. There were some dodgy turns and some narrow roads that caused a few crashes, but again it was the same senario as all the WIC races. Attack after attack.

In this case I managed to make the winning breakaway. I won't go too much into the actual race report because everyone knows what happened***. Fifth was not a bad result for me — not good, but not too bad.

[***Iguana's race report: The French Yann Guyader (Matter World Inline Center) surprised at the first Weinfelden SsangYong World Inline Cup with a great winning time of 1:01.12,11. The Columbian Diego Rosero (Sportvital Rollerblade) finished just behind Guyader second and Massimiliano Presti (Bont Hyper), the winner of the last stage in Incheon, got third.]

On Sunday there was another WIC race in Dijon France. It was a Class 1 race. I think it awardes 60 points for the win, instead of the usual 125. Our team decided not to go. There were several reasons. We had just returned from Korea so there was still some jet lag hanging around from that, three of us had raced Friday night as well as Saturday. Also the marathon on Saturday finished quite late. Aside from that, this weekend is one of the most important marathons of the season for me and the team, Zurich.

Zurich is always a strange race. It's pretty short at 35km and quite 'easy' because of the huge pack size and flat course. But it is sometimes quite hard. Of course, a lot depends on your role in the race. It's often quite hot there, too.

I will keep you posted on how it goes. In the meantime, I am off training.

Thanks,

Scott