World and Olympic champion Nino Schurter (Scott-SRAM) continued his domination of the Nove Mesto course at the opening round of the Cross-country World Cup on Sunday, taking his fifth win in the seven years of racing at this Czech Republic venue (six World Cups and one world championship, last year).
Last year, Schurter won the world title here and, on a course little changed, the Swiss rider once again showed that he is the top rider in the world at this time. The start was marred by a crash in the first few metres, when Matthias Stirnemann (Scott-SRAM) went over the bars after his chain broke, causing a pileup behind him.
Thomas Litscher (JB Brunex Felt) jumped into the lead on the start loop, but he was quickly overtaken by Schurter and David Valero (MMR Factory) once the riders began their six laps of the course. Valero hung on with Schurter for the first half of the race as the pair opened a gap on a chase group containing Julien Absalon (BMC), Maxime Marotte (Cannondale Factory) and Jordan Sarrou (BH-SR Suntour-KMC), but when Schurter put the hammer down on a climb the Spaniard was quickly dropped.
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Schurter cruised to his 21st World Cup victory, with Valero holding on for second. Absalon dropped the rest of the chase group to take third.
"I had a really good start and I felt pretty good," said Schurter. "This course really suits me well, it's a perfect course, one of my favourites. David showed a great performance. The first lap or so he attacked quite hard and made me suffer. I'm really happy to win here again. For me it is totally different this year. I have much less pressure, I had a great winter, did some good training but everything comes with less pressure, less expectations. It is going well so far and I'm really stoked."
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