The first few days we were all suffering from jetlag, but I felt okay before track practice at Friday. They did a few small changes to the track compare to last year, which was nice in my opinion. Practice felt smooth, but I was really hard to catch the landings of certain jumps, especially the first one coming of the start ramp. On Saturday I had to race the qualifying heats with a lot of fast riders from South America. I won my first and third heat race. Got 2nd in heat two, so easily qualified for Sunday racing. The top 64 guys split up in 8 groups of 8 racers. My 1/8 finals went pretty good, but I had race aggressive from the beginning. I won the first race and got 2nd place in the second and third race. During the Quarterfinal I messed up my start, because my reaction was too slow. The other riders closed me in, but I managed to fight back and got 4th by passing 2 guys in de last turn.
My semi final was a very strong race and I had the outside start position, which made it even trickier. This time my start was good, but I couldn’t get to the inside enough. I was in 5th place behind my teammate Jelle. He didn’t make any mistakes, so I couldn’t pass him. Too bad I just missed the final by 1 spot, but I’m really happy to be back and race more aggressive. It was another nice experience in Argentina and I really like the fans over there!
Congratulations to the podium finishers and my teammate Jelle for taking 4th place, well done! We flew back home from Argentina on Monday. Stopped for 1 night in Brazil and arrived in Amsterdam on Wednesday. Did some easy training sessions during the week and raced the 3-Nations Cup in Zolder, Belgium last Sunday. My jetlag wasn’t totally over, but I didn’t feel to bad and racing was fun.This race was also important for Olympic country points and we did
a good, because we got 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place with the elite men. I wasn’t happy to get 4th, because I know I could do better. Anyway, together with my teammates we got maximum points for our country, that’s why we raced!This Saturday I travel to California for the last UCI BMX Supercross (World Cup) in Chula Vista. Looking forward to race and get more points for the overall ranking.
-Raymon van der Biezen
After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.