Bronze European Cup Riga

It was since 2011 that I started in a EuropeCup. For my hunt in itu-poins for the world ranking I went to Riga (Lithuania) this weekend together with Kjel de Hertog. Last minute some big names joined the starting list (like Alexander Bryukhankiv, 7th OS Londen), so my goal in getting some points was harder to achieve. Luckily I had a secret weapon for my own and Kjel De Hertog would adjust his race on mine. His assignement was to close up the hole at the head while cycling. So I could start from the best position for my run. This kind of teamwork is played by the best countries and I knew Kjel would be my man for this.
It went just as expected, afther 15 kilometers of cycling where Kjell his indicator barely went below 400 Watts we joined the head group of the race. In the last kilometer he helped me perfect for the second changing. Now it was up to me to finish our teamwork.
Bryukhankov lived up to his role and got away like he always does. After this it was way more exciting for the other medals. In the first round of running I had to let 3 men go en was in 5th place. In the second round I fought myself back in the race en joined the 3 guys in front of me, where the 3rd guy had to go. Despite some attempts of getting away it ended with a sprint. Here I had to let Syutkin (UKR) go but was able to stay in front of Turbayevskiy (RUS).
After I missed the start of this year I dropped a lot of places in the world ranking. The biggest problem with that is that I couldn’t qualify for the “big” races. Thanks to my performance today I rose to the 85th place on the current world ranking, so hopefully it will be high enough to start at the WTS Grand Final (WC) on the 19th of September.
Mission accomplished and many thanks to Kjel!