On an Easter egg hunt at the Bad Sackingen Bundesliga

When I was little, every Easter the Easter Bunny, a.k.a. my  grandma and grandpa, would hide plastic Easter eggs around their house for my brother and I to hunt for.  They were filled with various types of candy and $2 bills (yes, unfortunately I am old enough to remeber $2 bills) that would fill our Easter baskets to the brim.  Naturally, my brother and I would turn this into a race to see who could find all of their eggs first.  I always won, although that depends upon who you ask- me or my brother.  Roughly 15 years later I am sitting in a team car going over the Brennero Pass in Austria with my FOCUS XC ITALY TEAM headed to another type of race, the Bundesliga mountain bike in Bad Sackingen, Germany on the hunt for results rather than little plastic eggs.

 The last stop in Italy at the Brennero Pass

The Bundesliga, like the soccer league, is a series of top level German national mountain bike races.  This weekend there are riders from 16 nations racing from as far away as Isreal (who happens to be the Israeli National champion racing for our German sister team, the FOCUS XC TEAM).  There is even another American in the race, which has been a rare occurance for me in the years since moving to Italy.  I have grown accustomed to eing the first American finisher by default… I’ll have to step up my game to keep my undefeated record intact!!!

Snow at our hotel in the southern part of the Black Forest

I am not the only one who will need to abstain from German pretzels and beer in order to show up in Bad Sackingen in top form, however.  For all of  us on the FOCUS XC ITALY TEAM, this is the first real test against some of the best mountain bikers in world.  Beltain Schmid and Andrea Righettini, who have both raced against the world’s best while wearing the maglia azzura  of the Italian national team, will look to use their experience to come up with good performances in the U23 race on Easter Sunday.  Fabian Rabensteiner, fresh off of 3rd place finish last week at the GF Tre Valli in Tregnago ,will have the opportunity to show his form again this week against a world-class field in Monday’s Elite race.  This race most certainly marks the end of the “pre-season” and the begining of our regular season journey across Europe to take on the best racers in the world.  Hopefully we’ll be able to go back to Italy having found a few “Easter eggs” of our own after our first International race as a team.