Brasil Ride six-day off to a decisive start
When well-rested riders lined up at the start of prologue of the Claro Brasil Ride mountain bike race at noon on Sunday, they were expecting an easy, leisurely 13km time-trial. On paper, the opening stage of the six-day race should not have been a decision-maker,
but by the end, dozens of riders were bloodied, bruised and left behind by two technical stretches of dirt, rock and sand.
"I think with all the people pre-riding, a lot of sand got dragged up onto the rocks and made things really slippery," said American rider Sonya Looney to the race press. "But I liked the course. It was really technical. You don't always get that at these
kind of races. We definitely didn't ride everything. The consequences are too great. You could gain 30 seconds or you could crash and be out of the race."
Looney and her team-mate Jeff Kerkove started the race strong but when Looney crashed and Kerkove had a mechanical issue, the pair fell behind. They ultimately finished in third in the mixed division, 1:30 behind husband-and-wife team Jenny and Brian Smith,
who were 20 seconds ahead of Swiss runner-up pair Renata Bucher and Damian Perrin.
The first across the line were Andy Eyring and Lukas Kaufman of the men’s open division. The Swiss-German pair finished the stage in 31:07, 18 seconds quicker than Martin Gujan and Christof Bischof. Czech duo Robert Novotny and Kristian Heynek finished 1:23
behind the winners for third place. Gujan and Bischof of Switzerland were the pre-race favourites but took the runner-up finish due to Bischof’s early crash.
"It was a pretty big crash in one of the fast sections," said a bloodied Bischof after the race. "Fortunately I only lost some skin."
The first women’s team across the line was Celina Carpinteiro and Ivonne Kraft, over ten minutes behind the overall winners but 1:32 ahead of the next of a total seven teams in the women’s competition.
The first stage was highlighted by the pairing of a tight and technical singletrack with long misleading paved sections, which left many competitors unprepared for the sand-covered sections. Monday’s stage two, a 139km race from Mucuge to Rio de Contas,
is expected to be the most difficult of the six stages, with barely a flat stretch on the long route and a total of approximately 11,000 feet of climbing. A third of the race’s total climbing and a quarter of the total distance will be covered in the second
of six days.
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