Singletrack

In second place Klaus Vesterlund….. Klaus…? (picture Daniel Rahbeak)

Hi there
Sunday the 24th of January I headed for Varde’s Wintercup final in Blåbjerg. Storming and freezing temperatures of -7 degrees. The destination must be on every Danish mountain bikers mind as the sandy and very nice track hosts the Danish nationals this summer. This Sunday we didn’t see much of the track as it was covered in 30 cm of snow.
The race followed the “White track” (o: in Blåbjerg. It’s a popular place to go so the track was acceptable to ride. The single tracks got a 30-40 cm wide firm decent track in the snow where you could ride. A singletrack in the singletrack.  If you left the track this would happen: Your bike went in one direction and your body in another. It was extremely difficult to ride. If you wanted to overtake a rider, you had to do a Carl Lewis sprint in 30cm of powder snow beside your opponent in cyclocross style or you could wait for the 2 km of wide road on each 12 km lap. Not shit. It was just impossible. Of the 3 laps to go the first was the easiest. After that the “singletrack²” was totally messed up by riders who had left the track. That surprised me and short into the second lap I crashed hard. Chain of, awry handlebar, gloves of, multitool. DAMN! I was pursuing local hero Christian Sloth and was 30 sec down. The crash didn’t change the fact that CS was by far the strongest and best bike handler this Sunday. He put 4 minutes into me on the 2 last laps. Nice going CS!
What’s left for me here is to apologize to organizers for not showing up at the award ceremony. Sorry. I was in a pretty bad condition due to the crash.
/Klaus Vesterlund

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Winter Veteran Vikings

“use the force my young apprentice”...we got it in 2002 and still do

Actually I’ve just spend 5 minutes trying to figure out how to combine the three words in the headline. Anyways, Thomas Bonne and I took the glory in the Wintercup in Aarhus and The Slush Cup in Copenhagen. It was winter, we caused havoc in the peloton and we sure as hell are old.

I felt old for sure. From the gun I just had to let go of my Idol Allan Bachmann, crazy Erik Skovgaard, and always Junior Simon Qvortrup. I felt like my heart just couldn’t follow the pace. It hurt and I started to get dizzy…(!) Well after spending the last part of the first lap taking it easy I was back on track. The trio was just 30 sec away and I felt I had the advantage on the very icy and tricky course. One lap later I found myself forming a quartet with the guys. And from there on everything went as usual: Bachmann rarely let go of the front and you could open a gap on him after every corner, Simon crashed on a defect bike and Erik slowly had to let go of his non human pace. That left the old diesel Viking in front and I slowly pulled away with 2 laps to go.
Thomas Bonne also managed to show the Danish elite how to handle in icy conditions and took a noticeable scalp at the Urban Slush cup as he beat Henrik Andersen, Tommy Nielsen, and the rest of riders in red. I think you could call it the Danish winter XCO championships.

We are not in April but I think this weekend showed that Team Rivette is alive and kicking!

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Cycle Cross Nationals

Kristian fighting hard for his bronze medal. Photo: mbaek.dk

This weekend it was time to find out who is the best cyclecross rider in Denmark. The national championships were held in Århus, on the old velodrome and the nearby horse track.
My start was scheduled to go at 13.00 alongside the womens field. I had a very good start and got through the first couple of turns in a good position on the very technical course.
Jonas Pedersen was extremely strong and just rode away from the rest of us. The excitement in the junior ranks was then about second place. I was fighting throughout the race with Emil Arvid Olsen for that silver medal, and the battle ended up in a sprint at the finish line with Emil taking second place and me getting the last podium position.
As a big fan of cycle cross I also watched the rest of the European countries finding their respective champions. Especially Belgium had my attention as it would be very exciting to find out if it was going to be World Champion Niels Albert or another Belgian superstar Sven Nys who would claim the title.
It ended up being Nys who won because a member of Sven Nys’ fanclub pushed Albert of his bike resulting in a broken rib.
Now I am going to do the last couple of cross races before changing my focus on the coming mtb season.
Thanks to all the spectators who showed up in Århus and cheered for me.

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Holiday training and racing

Thomas in muddy conditions. Picture from a previous race

With training races on each side of New Years it would pay off to keep the wheels spinning through Christmas. I tried my best but honestly felt I could’ve done better. The results weren’t too bad though. With a third and first place I feel a bit more relaxed about my training effort but are still alarmingly aware that a lot of work lies ahead in order to keep up the pace in the spring.
The third round of the cx-cup took place on New Years Eve on a fast rock-frozen course. My closest rivals from the second round, Henrik Andersen and Jonas Pedersen both from HMTBK, were at the start line including favorite for next week’s nationals in Århus, Tommy Nielsen. Right from the gun all three pushed hard to get to the front before the only but tricky downhill. Henrik Andersen got caught by some gnarly frozen tire-tracks and bruised his knee pretty bad. That same knee was in for some more punishment three days later (see below). Out on the 2 km long pavement section, Tommy Nielsen showed his favorite status and made a significant gap to everybody but Jonas. However, the youngster had to pay for his effort to stay on Tommy’s wheel and I was able to reel him in a couple of laps later. We kind of had a tag-team race from there on, taking turns to pull at the front, dropping our chains and chasing down Tommy. We got to within a dozen seconds but never caught him. I messed up on the descent on the penultimate lap and simply hadn’t the strength to close the gap on Jonas who took second. Henrik A and his swollen knee finished in fourth. The event finished in style with champagne and marzipan ring cake for everybody. All races should be like that!
Three days later the fourth round of the Slush Cup went down near Elsinore. Unbelievable but true, it was even colder with temperatures down to -4C°.  I suddenly recalled the joys of being a competitive cyclo-cross competitor. Anyway, with no cross races on that particular day the starting list included not only the usual suspects but also aforementioned Tommy Nielsen and Henrik Andersen. The course was relatively flat, but ice and frozen wheel-tracks made it a technical and bumpy experience. Actually I had anticipated to see a glimpse of four-time worldchampion (3xMTB, 1XCyclo-cross) Henrik Djernis, who was at the starting gate. An early puncture put him out of the race ahead of time but I’m sure he’ll make it to the super-final for the next round of the Urban Slush. The icy course had its first victim on the start-loop whenRasmus Jessing crashed hard. Luckily he seemed all good afterwards and had even picked up my timing-chip after a close encounter with his bike. Early on I got away with the thin-wheel-specialists Henrik and Tommy. We must have made a pretty odd looking trio. Me on a fully, Henrik on a hard-tail and Tommy on a cross-bike. That Tommy is one crazy son of a b… I had small advantage on him at the most tricky sections be threw that bike around like there was no tomorrow. It was good racing however, and we slowly distanced the others. Two thirds into lap two of three the skinny tires slid away under him and my luck saw Henrik A do just the same a second later. Another blow to his already banged up knee. Was I to ride fair and wait or go full gas? Henrik closed back up to me and that kind of settled things. Full gas! The last lap was pretty gnarly with a lot of overtaking on the icy course. The last 300 meters from the finish was one the more technical sections and I decide to go full out and try to take advantage of my fully. It was a successful move that almost backfired. I could’ve gone out on one more lap with two seconds remaining. Fortunately, Henrik didn’t seem eager to contest another lap either, so we both pulled the brakes and settled for three laps.
Next round of the Slush Cup will be the Urban Slush. Rumor has it that it will yet again be a real urban-mtb-course suiting the technical riders. It’s right in my back yard at the old Burmeister & Wain shipyard. And I will be bringing my crew along. Get ready for the blue armarda!

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