Swiss win stage, Czechs lead in Brasil Ride
At the halfway point of the inaugural Claro Brasil Ride, Swiss duo Christof Bischof and Martin Gujan were able to take the third of six stages when the race leaders, Robert Novotny and Kristian Hynek of
the Czech Republic, fell back due to two flat tires.
“The winner of this race won't necessarily be the best team,” said Hynek. “The winner will the best team whose bikes don't break.”
Tuesday’s stage three of the six-day Brasil Ride was an 87km circuit around Rio de Cantas with a total of 1746m of climbing. The Czech duo finished in third, 3:52 behind the Swiss stage winners. Local
favourites Ricardo Pscheidt and Gilbert Gois finished in second place, 3:19 behind the stage winners, and currently stand in third overall. The Swiss overall-runner-ups moved further ahead of the locals and now stand 13:06 behind the race leaders.
"In the first downhill we made a gap," explained Gujan, a World Cup-experienced rider. "After that we just rode our race. We got caught on the uphill, but then in the next downhill we got a gap again.
Then the Czechs had a flat and we were able to ride to the finish. With so much sand on the trails and the rain, it just destroys everything," he said. "Today we were not the fastest, we just had the best day overall."
The Czech team maintains a 13-minute lead thanks to their win in the demanding second stage on Monday, when they crossed the finish line just over 18 minutes ahead of Bischof and Gujan. The second stage
was the longest, at 139km, and included over 3km of climbing and on-and-off heavy rains. The stage one winners Andy Eyring and Lukas Kaufmann could not handle the course and fell way out of contention, while Novotny and Hynek put in a fantastic performance
which earned them the jump from third-place to first.
"I have bad stomach, I crashed, we had mechanical problems," said Kaufmann. "Basically everything went wrong."
It was in this second of six stages, which included a third of the race’s total climbing and a quarter of the race’s total distance, when the brand new Brasil Ride proved itself to be at the same level
as La Ruta de los Conquistadores. Unfortunately, the two ultimate high-endurance mountain biking races overlap in the Brasil Ride’s inaugural year, so there won’t be any of the same riders racing both events.
Tags: