The name “Kínok Kínja” (Agony of Agonies) isn’t by chance. Starting from the Basilica in Esztergom, the route climbs up to Dobogókő and then heads back down. To make matters worse, just before the race, they patched up the already battered tarmac using a gravel spread technique. Then came heavy rain, washing even more stones onto the road. Unsurprisingly, there were plenty of crashes along the way.
A week before the race, Szilárd and I went for a course recon and rode the route twice. I was clearly aiming for the podium, so we were scouting for attack points. Since I didn’t have any teammates in my age group, I had no one to help me, and I had to handle everything solo, from the start to the final sprint.
Long before hitting the zigzag section that leads up to the Basilica, there’s a hairpin turn followed by a steep climb—a real kicker even before the final, steep stretch. That last section starts from the lower parking level in front of the Basilica and finishes right up at the top. The elevation change is so significant that people normally take an elevator to get there.
We tested what would happen if I launched my attack way earlier, on that 10% gradient before the hairpin—a spot where no sane rider would typically start their sprint. In training, it worked. I had the legs to make it, so the plan for race day was to be at the front of the bunch by the time we hit that point and then launch my sprint from there.
It was a high-risk strategy because that’s a very long section with some tricky corners. But it paid off big time. I managed to surprise the others—only two riders could stay on my wheel. However, since they hadn’t paced themselves for such a long sprint at full power, I was able to hold them off, even though they were incredibly strong and came at me hard. I had to go full gas right to the line.
It worked, and that’s the video my dad was screaming through in a total trance:
I’d been hearing for a long time that the first win is always the hardest to get. And it’s true—you don’t really believe you can do it until you’ve actually experienced it. It was the same with my first podium: once I got that, the others came more easily, because my mindset shifted. I believed it was possible.
