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.

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