Finally the terrain in St Johann in Tyrol proved to be very hard physically and it was somehow difficult to cope with the map at night.
So many mistakes happened within the whole starting field.
Best was (as usual) Kerschi with a good margin to Bindi, who nearly caught me at the 10th control but then lost some time there. Warti had a stable race with few mistakes and got 3rd, whilst I had to stay out of the podium as 4th not so much behind Warti. My race was full of mistakes and missinterpretations of the map. The terrain was also not my favourite one with high undergrowth nearly everywhere and lots of green areas.
The next day was expected to be a thrilling race between me an Warti. The main reason was Kerschis departure and journey home already at night. This led to the situation that both of us had the chance to win the Austria Cup overall ranking this year.
Course data seemed to be a nice middle distance with not too much climbing. Reality was totally different. The Elite courses were set in a much harder and steeper terrain than the other categories. So the result was a hard and long race through thick and steep forest parts mostly mapped white or light green undergrowth.
I started first of us and tried to push very hard at first controls. Then to the 4th my first mistake was the result of too much pushing and I decided to stay calm and go on with some physical reserves. In the end I did two other mistakes and lost about 3 minutes overall. It was enough for a 3rd place 10 secs behind Markus and 51 behind Bindi who won. Warti got 4th 1:39 behind me and so I won the Austria Cup ranking with just 0,48 points in front of him.
