Cross country team scores top-5 in high altitude Andorra
Trek Factory Racing continued its cross country World Cup campaign with a trip to the high-altitude location of Vallnord, Andorra. The team fared well, with the weekend’s top result coming from Emily Batty’s top-5.
Emily Batty scored her first World Cup podium of the year, racing well in the thin air of Vallnord. Although the first two rounds of racing were below par for Emily, the result this weekend is a positive sign.
"I’m enthusiastic with riding myself onto the World Cup podium after my performance at the first two rounds were far below my expectations. My Trek Factory Racing team and everyone has been working hard around me, and I'm happy to deliver a result. Maybe the post-Olympic hangover is real, and up until these last few weeks, I never felt like mind and body had been clicking in training and racing. I had a clean race today despite a last lap crash that lost me the fourth place, and I had been working hard the entire race and that likely caught up to me. I’m happy that my performance is moving in the right direction for the later half of the season. I wanted to use this race to regain some confidence, hopefully, build on this result in Switzerland and see what I can do in Mont-Saint-Anne, Canada for round five of the World Cup.“
Factory supported rider Evie Richards continued her fantastic run of results. After a competitive race, Evie scored a third place.
Racing in Andorra is always super special, there's not many places where you get a gondola to the race site! It was a pretty tough day out on the bike, after possibly going a bit too hard at the altitude to start, I suffered towards the end of the race, but I'm still super happy to get on the podium in 3rd position, against some speedy ladies. As always I had amazing support and my family cheering makes every race so cool
Anton Cooper struggled in the thin air of Vallnord, and was unable to score a top result seen in the first two rounds.
"It was a tough one. I put myself in the wrong position very early on in the first lap, and got boxed in dropping back to around 15th. I pushed really hard to catch back up to the front by the end of the first lap and hung in there for another one hoping the pace would ease up but it didn't. I was unable to recover for 3 laps due to the high altitude and went backwards at a great rate of knots before finding some half decent legs with 2 laps to go to salvage an 18th position. A tough day but I feel like I learnt a lot and won't be making the same mistakes next weekend."
Sergio Mantecon is back in action, and finished in 55th place after missing the first two rounds of World Cup racing.
The racing continues this coming weekend in Switzerland. Stay in touch with the team via Instagram.
