I did not feel so crispy fresh for the whole race. Probably I trained a little bit too hard this week. Not many hours, but very intensive intervals on Wednesday with motor pacing afterwards. I felt too good on that day, and probably burned myself a little. Anyway second is still very good, but my feeling was not as good as in Houffalize. Ok, the course was also totally different today. Every climb full gas, or thats how it felt to me. The downhillʼs were really fun with a few steep drops. There was a huge crowed here and they loved it. I did not love my job that much during the race. I was suffering form A-Z. The first laps I could hardly hold on and was always around 10th position. Luckily there was a flat section at the start/finish where I could always catch up again.

Susi in Houffalize two weeks ago (courtesy Charles Delvaux)

You have been recently in South Africa for a tire testing session: do you like the new tire models? What about the new Sauserwind? We had the chance to test a new compound on fast track and sauserwind. this rubber is ultra fast, feels so smooth over bumps, better rolling and is lighter compare to all the old compounds we have raced.
the sauserwind i a awesome all around tire. it performes in any conditions! i race it when a course is demanding and just starting to dry up. i also ride it on my stumjumper and enduro bike.

Benno pondering the race to come on the long walk to the tech / feed zone (courtesy Gary Perkin) 

We were a greatly reduced team here in Andorra with Lene Byberg opting not to race, given a heavy race schedule to come, while Liam Killeen was stuck down with the flu in the latter stages of this week, thus forcing his withdrawal. With Kyle Strait in downhill action tomorrow, the only person left to fly the flag on today’s start line was Christoph Sauser, who certainly did not fail to impress.

The early stages and Susi is shaking things up (courtesy Gary Perkin)

The Epic was the perfect bike (courtesy Gary Perkin) 

Christoph, Specialized, Swiss Cycling and the team (Specialized Factory Racing) realise that many people are asking questions, so without giving a personal side to the crash; here are the facts as we see them and how we proceed from here.

Christoph was always “in the thick of the action” from the start and as the racing progressed the lead group got smaller until three riders were left in Leonardo Paez, Roel Paulisson and Christoph. Between feed points four (80km) and five (110km) Paez was dropped leaving Roel and Susi at the front.

Although, the video is off youtube, it features below in the Swiss TV Coverage. Swiss TV spent the entire day with the team, following the racing as it unfolded.

Link 1: Swiss tv, sunday night sport show
Link 2: swiss tv part1 with final sprint in slow motion after 2min
Link 3: Swiss tv part2
LInk 3: Swiss tv part3

Thank you Sports Publishing for posting the sprint finish on www.youtube.com. What did Susi do wrong? Click here for the finish.

Subsequent to our UCI appeal following the world marathon championships in Villabassa, Italy we have been informed that in accordance with the UCI rules for mountain biking our appeal is not admissible and cannot be taken into account. Christoph’s finish constituted an irregular sprint and the ruling on the day stands.

Naturally, we are disappointed and Christoph especially so, since never throughout any of the proceedings was he told of exactly what he did wrong. However, rather than focussing on a negative result we are looking both positively ahead and behind! Christoph is the UCI World XC Champion, has the Olympics just around the corner and is currently leading the overall World Cup standings. Christoph plans to defend his jersey and of course win in Beijing.

Thanks for your wave of support.

Taken from Susi's personal website www.sauserwind.com

Team Dinner: (L-R): Benno, Ryan, Claire, Philip (our translator), Bobby and Susi

Last Monday it was time to break down our settlement in the mountains, and head towards the big city. All in all, a pretty hectic day: riding before breakfast, packing, 2hrs bus driving to the Olympic village, taxi to specialized hotel near course, training on course, shower, back to village for meeting the press, dinner, taxi back to Specialized hotel.

For athletes it is not easy to check into any hotel here in Beijing at all. No hotel wants to take responsibility for us, because of food poisoning, terror attack or sucking into the sink :-) etc. Also there are some politics going on between the organisers we don't really know.

Please feel free to click here, in order to read an interview by www.cyclingnews.com with Susi, relating to the Olympics and his thoughts for the future ......