Sunday, August 13, 2023 at 09:00
The first place off the podium is always the most ungrateful, but it must have been even more painful for Victor Koretzky at the mountain bike world championships. The French mountain biker crossed the line with a clear hand gesture towards the UCI. “This is disgusting and unfair. I have no other words for it,” he said The team.
Koretzky, the winner of two World Cup rounds and also the runner-up in the Short Track World Championship earlier this week, did not believe his ears when he heard last week that the International Cycling Union last minute changed the rules regarding the running order at the Cross Country World Championships. Men like Tom Pidcock and Mathieu van der Poel, but also Peter Sagan suddenly came to stand before him.
The Frenchman is number 54 in the world and saw starting places 33 to 40 suddenly reserved for riders who are in the top 10 of the UCI ranking in another discipline, top 20 in the World Ranking on the road, or – in Sagan’s case – just ex-world champions. The rest of the starting order was determined on the basis of the UCI ranking, while in World Cups this is usually done on the basis of the result of the Short Track race.
Mathieu van der Poel and Tom Pidcock are allowed to start on the fifth row at the mountain bike world championships
Koretzky therefore felt cheated. “We all fight all year to train, progress and then we don’t all start on an equal footing. I think everyone sees the problem. It is not normal and not legitimate what the UCI has done here. They have to ask themselves questions about what they are doing.”
Already beaten at the start
In the end, Koretzky ended up in fourth place, 43 seconds behind winner Pidcock and nine seconds behind the bronze medalist Nino Schurter. “But if I can start on the fifth row like Pidcock, then I can fight with him for the win. Now I immediately lose twenty seconds at the start. If I race on the road, they can’t let me leave at the start twenty seconds after the peloton, can they?
“It is precisely that effort that I have to make at the beginning of the race, to get back to the front of the race, that I can no longer make at the end,” said Koretzky. “I am now very disappointed. Especially because I showed that I was almost as strong as him.”
2023-08-13 07:00:00
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