We lined up at the Slovak Cup representing APPSolute Sport BTS SE — just the two of us: Balázs Korondi and myself. He raced in the U17 category, while I took on the U19 field. Both of us were riding solo.
My race distance was 135 kilometers, made up of five laps, each 27 kilometers long. Balázs completed three laps for a total of 81 kilometers. Each lap had around 200 meters of elevation gain, so we’re talking about a flat race in cycling terms — that’s roughly 1,000 meters over five laps.
I went with the Orbea bike, which is pretty much the perfect choice for a course like this — flat, fast, and open.
During yesterday’s recon ride, we had beautiful sunshine and barely a breeze. But come race day, conditions changed drastically — steady winds of 25 to 30 km/h, with gusts reaching up to 50. Since the course was laid out in a square circuit, that meant two sections of crosswind, one headwind, and one tailwind per lap.
Most of the course runs past open farmland, so even the stretches with trees offered little shelter — not a single leaf on the branches yet to cut the wind.
But that’s part of the game — the wind is the same for everyone.
There were a lot of us lining up at the start. Cycling is a big deal in Slovakia — the community is strong, and racing is taken seriously. That’s always great to experience. It’s motivating to compete in an environment where everything is so well-organized and respected.
They don’t use chip timing, but with decades of race experience, they’ve got the process down. Between the photo finish, video footage, and a highly experienced panel of commissaires, results are announced quickly and handled very professionally.
Course safety was top-notch — honestly, I wish it were like this everywhere. And the road surface? Pretty much flawless all the way. Most of the course had an incredibly smooth surface — fast and reliable — and even the few less-than-perfect stretches were still in excellent condition.
Every age group had a strong field here. This race was open to riders from Slovakia and the surrounding countries, from U13 all the way up to the Elite category.
In our case, the U19 riders started together with the Elites — which already hinted that after a controlled rollout, things were going to kick off fast.
We had 74 Elite riders and 80 from the U19 category on the line — 154 riders in total, waiting for the start.
The Elite field was packed with big names. From our side, the Karcag crew was here with Viktor Filutás, and so were three Continental teams — including squads like Dukla and Pierre Baguette. Even the Czech National Team car showed up with riders who clearly weren’t here just for the experience.
There was only one climb on the course that you could really call a proper uphill — and even that was just a few hundred meters long. That’s where the organizers had set up the feed zone, and where most riders grabbed a bottle.
The wind was coming in from the right on that stretch, and that’s also the side where bottles are usually handed up. But in that kind of crosswind, the smarter move is to ride on the left, using the riders on the right as a wind shield.
I figured that section might get interesting — tactically, position-wise. But in the end, that wasn’t where the real surprises came. Far from it.
As expected, in the first lap the Elite Continental teams took control and started setting a really fast pace.
Everyone was fighting to stay with them — the goal was to prevent them from breaking away and taking a few lucky riders with them.
So the tempo was intense right from the start, even on the crosswind sections. There were a few crashes, but I managed to avoid any trouble in that opening lap.
Toward the end of lap one, for some reason, the bunch started to break apart. The field split into several smaller groups. (Later I found out that the group had split into six smaller groups.)
At the beginning of lap two, we caught up with the two smaller groups ahead of us and started riding together. Then well after the feed zone climb — somewhere around the middle of the second lap — we managed to reconnect with the main peloton.
We hadn’t been back in the group for more than a kilometer, when, just after a climb through a small village, a huge crash happened right in front of me. At least twenty riders went down. The guy just ahead of me flipped straight over the rider who crashed in front of him.
In situations like that, there’s no guaranteed right move. If you brake too hard, another rider might hit you from the back. But if you don’t react in time, you’ll crash right into them. I braked as best I could — I was expecting it — and in the very last second I managed to stop by hitting the bike of the guy who crashed right in front of me.
I had already unclipped one foot and was even dragging it slightly on the ground to slow down.
But the road was completely blocked — bikes and riders were lying everywhere, across the entire width. There was literally no way through. The part of the peloton we’d just rejoined — or at least the ones who were ahead of the crash — just kept going at race pace, pulling away.
I had no choice but to wait until a few people could scramble back to their feet. There was no chance of getting through without stepping on someone. I checked the data afterwards — I was stuck there, motionless, for 25 seconds. And even after that, I could only get going by unclipping fully, lifting my bike, and weaving my way over the tangled mess of bikes and bodies.
Just two or three of us managed to get through. By the time we got back on the bike, the main group was already far ahead.
We set off and tried to chase, but of course the strongest riders were right up front — way out of our reach. We rotated the lead but the slipstream we got from each other was nothing like what you get in a full group.
Still, we kept going, hoping that some of the riders we’d been with earlier would catch up to us, so we could join up again and maybe still make something of it.
By the start of lap three, we were around three minutes behind the front of the race — and we knew they were moving faster than us.
At that point, we didn’t know it, but later — at the finish — we found out they’d had their own adventure. Two deer suddenly ran onto the course. One of them, I heard, actually jumped over the group. But the other landed right in the middle of the bunch and brought down three riders.
We didn’t see the deer — but when we passed through that section, we could tell there had been a crash. Still, most of the main group made it through, so they stayed up in front of us.
I was riding with a group of about thirty riders, and we were probably around four minutes behind the main peloton.
Then, as we finished lap three, the organizers told us to pull out — we were outside the time limit.
We didn’t really understand how that could be. By then, the race had been going for around 120 minutes, and the time cut was supposed to be 10%.
We figured that meant about 12 minutes — and there was no way we were that far back. Turns out, we weren’t — our gap was more like four minutes.
I’m still not entirely sure what the exact rule was, but later, talking with riders from other teams at the finish, it seemed like the 10% might have been calculated per lap.
So if one lap took 40 minutes, the cut-off would’ve been four minutes — per lap.
I don’t know if that’s the explanation, but in any case, we followed the instructions and pulled out. Still, I would’ve liked to finish the race.
So in the end, out of the 154 riders in the combined Elite + U19 field, only 46 made it to the finish — just 18 of them from U19.
It felt a bit like one of those really tough Italian races. Out of 74 Elite riders, only 28 finished the full distance.
Later I checked the results in the other categories, and it seemed like this strict time cut only applied to the U19 and Elite. In every other category, there were valid finish times even with gaps of 15 to 20 minutes. And they rode fewer laps than we did.
I even spoke to a few U19 riders who had finished way behind us — and they remembered it the same way — but they weren’t pulled out.
What’s more, we were marked as DNF, while others were listed as OTL (outside time limit).
We still don’t have a clear answer about what really happened, but of course we accepted the decision — and I think everyone else did too.
It would just be nice to understand it.
At the finish, I met up with Balázs. He hadn’t had a great day either. He got caught in a crash right near the start.
He managed to get back up and, after a long and strong effort, chased his way back to the peloton — but in the end, he couldn’t finish where he would’ve liked to, or where he was capable of finishing, without that crash.
That’s just how this day turned out — there’s no changing it now.
Looking back at my numbers, the data confirms the legs were really good.
It didn’t lead to a result today, but that’s how it goes sometimes. I’ll count it as paying my dues — and I’m already looking forward to the next race.
