TEAM STANDERT RACING THE SECOND STAGE OF THE MOL CUP IN LEHNIN.
Race day. The day was promising - promising difficult weather conditions. Sun, wind, rain and hail. All changing every five minutes. The women and seniors, who were the first races of the day, got the worst of it. As the elite race was about to start the sun came out. And it was there to stay. We were lucky. Time to race.
After an impressive team effort and Silvio's win on stage one at the Schäferberg we were marked. The race started from the gun. 3, 2, 1, full throttle. It may have been the hardest first lap we ever raced. And the race stayed like that. Nobody wanted to let anyone go and for us it was clear that there should be no breakaway without at least one of us in it. So we followed everything. Especially in the second half of the race there was no way you got anywhere without Peter chasing you down (for the data fans: the result was 353 watts/normalized for two hours). But with us going with every move mostly the whole bunch was following. Making it a race full of attacks with not a single one being successful. The last laps, the last attempts to get away, but it was meant to be a bunch sprint. A tricky one with a bottleneck with around 2km to go. Bene got Maxes wheel but lost it in the chaos of the bottleneck. The boys went on to the next scenario. Maxe fired down the rough road of the penultimate kilometer with Silvio in tow and Peter as back-up. Full gas into the last turn and leading out Silvio for the final kick. Silvio went early into the headwind of the final straight. A very long way to go. But he could hold it and made it two out of two. Big win for Silvio and the team! Peter came in 6th and Bene 8th.
In the senior's race Peter and Marco gave it all in constantly changing weather conditions. A breakaway went clear and they tried to chase it down. But as they didn’t get much help it wasn’t meant to be. The break was successful and Marco and Peter finished in the main field as 13th and 19th after a hard race.
