The European Handbike Circuit World Cup races took place in Rosenau -- France -- on the 11th of April 2009.
Since this is one of the most famous races, the majority of my Achilles Team / Sopur-Quickie, were present there.

I left the Netherlands on Thursday night to France which took me more than 8 hrs driving.
After arrival in the early morning hours on Friday, I took some rest in my room then headed to start preparing my bike for the Saturday race.

There were too many participants at the race, particularly in my division where more than 65 participants from all the elite and best sprinters of the world.

On the race day, after taking a light breakfast, I drove to the race course in a perfect sunny weather with minimum wind.
All well warmed up, at 13:15 they called us for the start position and here went the start signal!

As usual, the race began at very high speed and after 20km down the course I succeeded to go away from the group and keep a 800m gap.
However, after riding for about 10km on my own, the other group caught up with me.

Taking into consideration that race distance is 44km, I was expecting a very fast sprint at the end, so I tried to gather my energy and recover from my solo riding. One km before the finish line, the other guys began the sprint so I reacted with very high speed which reached more than 47 km/hr on the last 500m.

I kept pushing at high speed until the finish line and won the race with more than 5 sec from the second winner.

I was very happy winning this important race against all the elite and best riders and sprinters in the world.
Now I am 8 points far away from the yellow jersey which my friend Vittorio Podesta from Italy still hold!

I am looking forward for my third race in this World Cup which will be in Oensingen – Switzerland.

Download Rosenau Results -- PDF

My second race this year was the Holland Handbike Circuit in Huijbergen (Noord-Holland) on the 22 of March 2009.

As I was last year the winner there, I had to try to hold my title. The race began with high tempo amongst all the athletes and after many attacks, I succeeded to runaway from my group and joined another division. However, I wanted to try my best to rank as overall winner.

Both groups were in the same team which made my race harder!
Therefore, I tried to save my energy for the last sprint which took me the final win.
The course of the race required high technical skills and needed strong concentration and right timing which was a great experience for me.
My next race will be in France on the 11 of April, I will keep you update with all the information.