Schurter wins Gara d'apertura MTB Monte Tamaro ahead of Absalon

One week before the first race of the Swiss cross country national racing series, a star-stacked field lined up for the season opener at the foot of Monte Tamaro. Nino Schurter and Lisa Mitterbauer won the elite men's and women's races.

"Over the winter, I put in a lot more training hours and especially more basic and long distance training in order to prevail at the Cape Epic and in my road experiences," said Schurter. "The GP Apertura was the perfect warm-up for South Africa."

The weather could have hardly been any better at the season-opening race: The first early summer day in the Ticino region brought with it plenty of sunshine and temperatures ideally suited for racing.

The list of starters in the men's race was quite spectacular as well: Apart from Schurter and Julien Absalon, a lot more of mountain biking's big names were competing in Rivera. The circuit was technically very demanding, featured a number of steep but not overly long climbs and offered hardly any opportunity for recovery.

Right from the start, world champion and World Cup overall winner Schurter was in charge of things. He set off on his own, and Thomas Litscher was the only rider who managed to get back on Schurter's wheel, going deep on the longest climb of the course.

"Even if I had to pay for that effort later on, it was not for nothing as I managed to get quite an advantage on Florian Vogel that way," said Litscher. "And on top of that I still need to get more race-hardened, and where to do that any better than against such a stacked field in Switzerland?"

Absalon eventually overtook Litscher for second place.

"The track was technically demanding with a lot of switchbacks and speed changes," said Schurter. "I'm happy to see that the change in my preparation did not have any bad influence on my agility and power."

In the elite women's race, Mitterbauer beat Forchini and Koba.

Full Results

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Elite men
#Rider Name (Country) TeamResult
1Nino Schurter (Swi)1:27:07
2Julien Absalon (Fra)0:00:36
3Thomas Litscher (Swi)0:01:42
4Florian Vogel (Swi)0:02:16
5Moritz Milatz (Ger)0:02:35
6Kohei Yamamoto (Jpn)0:03:18
7Martin Gujan (Swi)0:05:12
8Stéphane Tempier (Fra)0:05:34
9Markus Bauer (Ger)0:06:16
10Florian Chenaux (Swi)0:06:23
11Reto Indergand (Swi)0:07:05
12Lukas Flückiger (Swi)0:07:05
13Andri Frischknecht (Swi)0:07:45
14Pascal Meyer (Swi)0:08:30
15Michael Hutter (Swi)0:08:51
16Michael Stünzi (Swi)0:09:05
17Emilien Barben (Swi)0:09:15
18Giancarlo Sax (Swi)0:10:22
19Fabian Paumann (Swi)0:10:36
20Nicola Rohrbach (Swi)0:10:58
21Marcel Wildhaber (Swi)0:11:07
22Claude Koster (Swi)0:11:32
23Bryan Allemann (Swi)0:12:25
24Ulisse Fieschi (Swi)0:14:01
25Nicolas Fischer (Swi)0:14:14
26Dylan Page (Swi)0:14:25
27Daniel Eymann (Swi)0:15:09
28Bruno Vitali (Swi)Row 27 - Cell 2
29Nick Albrecht (Swi)Row 28 - Cell 2
30Joel Koller (Swi)Row 29 - Cell 2
31Joseph De Poortere Emelien (Fra)Row 30 - Cell 2
32Marc Stutzmann (Swi)Row 31 - Cell 2
33Florian Thie (Swi)Row 32 - Cell 2
34Sylvain Engelmann (Swi)Row 33 - Cell 2
35Corentin Cousteur (Fra)Row 34 - Cell 2
36Victor Pinthon (Fra)Row 35 - Cell 2
37Philipp Hediger (Swi)Row 36 - Cell 2
38Jan Schaer (Swi)Row 37 - Cell 2
39Jeremias Marti (Swi)Row 38 - Cell 2
40Yoshitaka Nakahara (Jpn)Row 39 - Cell 2
41Vincent Sibille (Fra)Row 40 - Cell 2
42Kohei Maeda (Jpn)Row 41 - Cell 2
43Yves Albrecht (Swi)Row 42 - Cell 2
44Buchler Fabian (Swi)Row 43 - Cell 2
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Elite women
#Rider Name (Country) TeamResult
1Lisa Mitterbauer (Aut)1:38:35
2Ramona Forchini (Swi)0:06:34
3Sarah Koba (Swi)0:08:39
4Sofia Pezzatti (Swi)0:09:56
5Linda Indergand (Swi)0:10:48
6Franziska Brun (Swi)0:17:50
7Chantal Eheim (Swi)0:03:15
8Romaine Wenger (Swi)0:05:00
9Chrystelle Baumann (Swi)Row 8 - Cell 2
10Mallory Barth (Swi)Row 9 - Cell 2

 

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