The European Handbike Circuit World Cup – Rosenau

The European Handbike Circuit World Cup races took place in Rosenau — France — on the 11th of April 2009.
Since this is one of the most famous races, the majority of my Achilles Team / Sopur-Quickie, were present there.

I left the Netherlands on Thursday night to France which took me more than 8 hrs driving.
After arrival in the early morning hours on Friday, I took some rest in my room then headed to start preparing my bike for the Saturday race.

There were too many participants at the race, particularly in my division where more than 65 participants from all the elite and best sprinters of the world.

On the race day, after taking a light breakfast, I drove to the race course in a perfect sunny weather with minimum wind.
All well warmed up, at 13:15 they called us for the start position and here went the start signal!

As usual, the race began at very high speed and after 20km down the course I succeeded to go away from the group and keep a 800m gap.
However, after riding for about 10km on my own, the other group caught up with me.

Taking into consideration that race distance is 44km, I was expecting a very fast sprint at the end, so I tried to gather my energy and recover from my solo riding. One km before the finish line, the other guys began the sprint so I reacted with very high speed which reached more than 47 km/hr on the last 500m.

I kept pushing at high speed until the finish line and won the race with more than 5 sec from the second winner.

I was very happy winning this important race against all the elite and best riders and sprinters in the world.
Now I am 8 points far away from the yellow jersey which my friend Vittorio Podesta from Italy still hold!

I am looking forward for my third race in this World Cup which will be in Oensingen – Switzerland.

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