Parti wins Maros Cup

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On Saturday, Cluj-Napoca hosted the second edition of the Maros Bike XCO Cup, a UCI Category 2 race organized by the Maros Sport Club under the supervision of the Romanian Cycling Federation.

Availability of points for Olympic Games qualification attracted a line-up of experienced riders. The national teams of Romania, Hungary, Serbia battled it out with the others on a technical and 4.8km course with 180m of climbing per lap.

Rain the previous week resulted in muddy conditions that added to the excitement and unpredictability of an already challenging track. The favourites handled these conditions well and the hungarian pair of Andras Parti and Szilard Buruczki stamped their authority on the race from the first lap, opening up a gap of 30 seconds.

Over the next few laps, Buruczki increased the pressure and nobody but his national team colleague could match this high tempo. But this early effort seemed to have cost him too much energy because on lap 4, Parti launched a decisive attack, that turned out to be the race-winning move.

Well behind this pair Hungarian rider Blazso Marton went almost unchallenged on a solo ride to gain third place. The fight for the fourth position was the most intense, Slovakian rider Martin Haring recovered from a huge crash to beat local favourite Lucian Logigan and Serbia's Bojan Djurdjic for fourth.

Despite the fact that local riders missed out on the podium, they managed to show promise by getting sixth and eighth.

The women's race was dominated by pre-race favourite Gyurka Zsuzsa, who again showed the quality that made her one of Romania's premier talents.

Full Results