KTM Vittoria Team with its rider Maxime Loret traveled to Germany, to Heubach in Rosenstein, to ride the BikeTheRoc event. This Mountain Bike Festival brings together many MTB practices, from XC marathon to enduro and XCO. The goal being to make intense efforts and spend time in the race, before next deadlines. Story of a race in XCO Bundesliga!

On Saturday, Official XCO Training takes place for Maxime. The weather is correct, the track quite physical, taking a road that makes the riders climb to an altitude of 750m. We can already imagine that on a 4km lap, this climb of more than 2km will hurt legs. The descent is technical and fast. Unfortunately the weather has decided to toughen the race. The heavy night rain literally changed the playing field.

Maxime Loret, unstoppable !

A veritable deluge of rain falls on our intrepid riders and the previous races have plowed the tracks, the elite riders settle on the line. The countdown is launched, more than a few seconds before the start. Maxime presses hard, certainly too hard and unclips from both feet. Time to realize, he starts again. The long climb allows him to restart the machine. The first group of 8 riders moves away. Maxime finds himself in a second group with the New Zealand rider from Trek Anton Cooper. He goes back, makes efforts, again and again and returns to around 10th place at the end of the first lap. He’s in good shape, legs are strong and Maxime manages to avoid falses on this changing track. He comes back to 40sec from 3rd place, 2 laps from the end. All efforts start to get hard. The freshness begins to fall down, the last nutrition gel will not be enough to reach the podium. Maxime Loret fought a good battle with Pierre De Froidmont of Team KMC Orbea in the last 2 laps.

Pierre attacks in the long climb, Maxime comes back slowly and counters him at the top. By descending in front, he protects himself from his return and managed to complete this terrible race in 6th position in extreme weather conditions.

Pictures : Keno Derleyn & Sportograf

“Maxime had a great race, he has this ability of great champions to remotive himself and never let go! No cramps, no mechanical problems, it’s perfect for confidence. Especially with Haiming next week, on a track that he particularly adores! ”

Jérôme Dericbourg – Team Manager

Next meeting in Haiming – Austria for the Ötztal Mountain Bike Festival and its UCI HC round from April 29 to May 1, 2022!

Kévin Laporte | 25-04-2022