DAY 04: WELCOME TO HUNGARY
Riding To Sochi Project
Day 04: 01 Mai 2013
Strecke: 221km , all in Hungary – Nagykanizsa – Balatonkeresztur– Siofok – Dunafoldvar crossing the Danube – Füllöpsallas
Sigi Grabner’s Roadbook: A place to stay
This country is amazing – Hungary! Everything seems so neat, clean, friendly and idyllic. The flat landscape makes us roll fast, endless fields, growing crops, shepherds with their dogs and their flock waving to us and around us everywhere flat plains with horses! White Lipizzaner horses. So beautiful. Here I must talk about food, because we need a lot of that to keep our pace 🙂 We had a really strong Hungarian breakfast this morning with 3 eggs for each of us spring onions and paprika fresh from the garden, homemade bread etc. Normally a place to stay – but… So off we went again, we took the road along Lake Balaton, daily high temperatures 32° Centigrade.
When you ride the roadbike you see a lot of things beside the road. Here it is extremely clean, there is absolutely no trash along the road, nothing! We rolled across the big Danube river bridge at Dunafoldvar. There Laszlo was waiting for us, the Hungarian speaker of Eurosport. He accompanied us to our hotel in a little village with the strange name of Füllöpszallas. They have a horse farm and we see the white Lipizzaner horses outside our window, and in the stables. It is sooo amazing. I like it here!
And here is my new Hungarian word of the day: Köszönöm! (thanks)
DAY 03: FOUR COUNTRIES IN ONE DAY
Day 03: 30 April 2013, 223km, Bleiburg (AUT) – Maribor (SLO ) – Cakvez (CRO) – Nagykanizsa (HUN)
Today is day3 of our tour and we have just stopped at a nice vineyard in Hungary after 223 km of eastward biking. We had to cross 3 borders today: Breakfast in Austria, lunch in Slovenia, coffee time in Croatia and now it’s going to be dinner in Hungary. The change of landscape is amazing. Yesterday we still were in snowcovered mountains, and today we will sleep in a vineyard. Everything is summer-like, the smells, the noises, the flowers. I remember how much I appreciated my wind/water proof Xenon jacket in the morning and then I started the striptease crossing Croatia ☺… now arriving in this lovely vineyard at Nagykanisza I have emptied several bottles of water and am wearing summer style shorts. We were lucky rolling eastbound, enjoying a nice southwestern wind, which was on our side and helped us to speed up .
TAG 02: WETTERGLÜCK UND ANDERES MEHR
220km Strecke in Österreich, Lienz – Villach – Velden – Wörthersee – Bodental – Bleiburg/Pliberk
Wir starten heute um 9h in Lienz vor dem SG Snowboards Firmenbüro – seit 6 Uhr auf den Beinen, nur wenig Schlaf – alles einpacken, nichts vergessen, letzter Check – RepairKit für das Fahrrad, Reserveschläuche, eine zweite Laufradgarnitur, Werkzeug, gute Fahrradwäsche für jedes Wetter ist wichtig, Telefon, Feuerzeug, mein Frühstücksmüsli (sorry Leute das muss sein) – und das wichtigste, Kreditkarte, der Pass, ein Funkset, damit wir uns mit unserem Begleitbus verstaendigen koennen, wo’s kein Netz gibt..
PROJECT “RIDING TO SOCHI” 01. – 28. APRIL 2013
125km Strecke – 1600 Höhenmeter – Anfahrt zum Treffpunkt am Toblacher Feld über die Pustertaler Höhenstraße – Toblach – Innichen – Sillian – Lienz
Die Tour ist für mich heute losgegangen. Die Anfahrt zum Treffpunkt mit den drei Südtiroler Kollegen Roland Fischnaller, Aaron March und Erich Pramsohler habe ich über die Pustertaler Höhenstraße gemacht. Das wird diesmal wohl meine einzige Bergetappe sein, weil der Rest ja nur bergab geht… jedenfalls sind keine steilen Pässe oder Anstiege bis zum Schwarzen Meer dabei. Ich fahre gern Bergetappen und für mich ist die Pustertaler Höhenstraße die schönste in Österreich. Du fährst in einem herrlichen Panorama, es ist anspruchsvoll, ein paar steile Rampen sind dabei, es ist eine tolle Strecke! Dazu kommt heute auch Wetterglück – ein perfekter Frühlingstag, und alles das macht mir einen guten Spirit, um das „Riding To Sochi“ Projekt zu starten. (more…)
RIDING TO SOCHI PREPARATION
SEASON 2012/13
This season ends with a good feeling after all. It was a difficult start and a tough struggle, but I found myself free and having fun at racing in the end. Too bad for the race cancellation in Sierra Nevada, when I had just started to get into it 😉 In La Molina I found “the feeling again”, not thinking of my knee nor my ankle, just fun racing – and immediately came back to the top. Now I am ready for everything and we will meet next season…
Season Highlights
What makes me proud are the SG riders in World Cup, who showed excellent results this year: EVERY SINGLE of our riders went to the podium in this year’s competitions at least one time: Roland Fischnaller, Benjamin Karl, Justin Reiter, Aaron March, Nevin Galmarini, Lukas Mathies, Sylvain Dufour, Toni Unterkofler, Andreas Lausegger, Pierre Vaultier and the Rookies Indrik Trahan, Daniel Krebs, Valerie Kolegov, the ladies Nelly Moenne-Loccoz, Hilde-Katrine Engeli, Anke Karstens, Ina Meschik, Steffi Müller and the Rookies Ester Ledecka, Natalia Soboleva and Cheyenne Loch. Cheers and Congratulations to all of you – a great job and I am proud of racing with you!
Pic by Martin Lugger
FINALLY COMEBACK TO PODIUM
World Cup PGS, La Molina, Spain: Enjoy Riding!
After having had a really tough season (comeback from knee surgery) I finally did it! Back on Podium in PGS in La Molina, Spain. Today I enjoyed rirdng run by run, getting better each round and felt real snowboarding again. Beating strong riders on my way into the Big Final (Roland Fischnaller from Italy, Sylvain Dufour from France and Austrian teammate Benjamin Karl) it was yet very tight in the finals against Andi Prommegger: 0,17 sec. So I was second in the end, but enjoyed riding a lot and surely was very fast 🙂
So still joy rules my day today and I am looking forward to the season’s finals in Sierra Nevada now. ¡OLÈ!
Es war eine harte Saison bisher nach meiner Knieoperation, aber heute ist es so weit: I’m back! Beim heutigen Weltcup PGS in La Molina, Spanien, machte mir jeder Lauf Spaß! Auf dem Weg ins Große Finale hatte ich es mit starken Fahrern zu tun (zuerst Roland Fischnaller, Italien, dann Sylvain Dufour, Frankreich und Teamkollege Benjamin Karl). Im Finale selbst war es ebenfalls sehr eng, ich war um 0,17 sec. der Zweite nach Andreas Prommegger, aber ich bin total glücklich. Es war geiles Snowboarden und ich war schnell 😉
pic by Oliver Kraus/FIS
Heute ist Feiern angesagt und ich freue mich schon auf das Saisonfinale in der Sierra Nevada am Mittwoch, 20. März. !OLÈ!
MOCKBA 2013
PSL on ramp
On Saturday 23rd evening will be the last PSL of the 2013 season on the ramp in Moscow. The preparations on the ramp are still being done and so no training was possible today.
Also tomorrow only training possibilities will be in the Olympic Parc on the Mockba River where the race was held in 2011. The weather is perfect, sunny and Russian-like cold. Looking forward to the race on Saturday 🙂
SOCHI 2013 PSL/PGS
PSL cancelled
The spring-like weather conditions this week in Sochi’s olympic ski resort Rosa Kytor were very challenging to organize the pre-olympic events in PGS and PSL. Ranging from rain, temperatures up to 18 °C, sunshine and warm foehn-winds I coud get an impression how quickly weather can change here and it seems that it is a pretty usual situation here in the caucasian mountains in the south of Russia. The black sea is only about 50 km away sending lots of humidity towards the mountains and makes a similar climate like for instance in Whistler/Cypress Hill area of the 2010 Olympic Games.
In yesterday’s PGS I was pretty disappointed to not get into finals and only taking the 21st spot fate qualifications. It was a fun course to ride and I really enjoyed the good hill which has got all different terrains. First run I was definitely too careful as I expected the slope to be more rough than it actually was. So even a quite good second couldn’t help to reach the top 16. The course crew did a good job and so the PGS race was still pretty good to ride and the finals looked nice. Watching the race I really wanted to go for finals today in PGS.
But the responsible guys from FIS and OC did not handle the situation with the difficult weather circumstances right. They missed to prepare the slope for PSL yesterday night and so they did it this morning. With these high temperatures it is impossible to get proper snow and slope quality for the race by doing these preparations only in the morning. So unfortunately the PSL today got cancelled because it was just too soft snow.
We have had too many badly organized races during the last years. Like today it was always the combination of difficult weather and poor organization. I really hope the responsible people from FIS and OC will learn from this so next year the Olympic races can be good here in Sochi. I want to win medals here in two beautiful races!
SOTCHI 2013
Pre-Olympic Races in Sotchi
The weather is a challenge: after getting used to the cold in Canada, we now enjoy training in the rain. The landscape here is amazing, the race slope looks very nice, and the view on top of Mother Russia is awesome!