Joel Roth put his stamp on the race at the start, but the Swiss champion ran into increasing problems when Culell Estape pushed the pace halfway through the race. The Spaniard quickly opened up a gap, while the Italian Edoardo Xillo tried to catch up. Joel Roth is in third place at this point, but the rivals behind him have more to offer.

Alexandre Balmer is one of them. He rides past Roth in the Benjamin Le Ny and when the Frenchman makes a mistake in a technical passage, Balmer is able to pull away decisively. "I held back at the start because I knew that it would be difficult to recover here. I never gave it my all and only when Benjamin made the mistake did I go full throttle. Before the last lap, I saved some energy on the flat section and gave it my all again on the uphill," said Balmer, explaining how he won his silver medal. "I'm very happy, after all I'm a junior in my first year," said Balmer.

Joel Roth loses ground in the last two laps and ends up crossing the finish line in a good eighth place. He loses 2:38 minutes to Culell. "I don't think I did too much at the start. If I had ridden slower, the group would have been gone. I broke on the last two laps. I could still feel the strain from the Team Relay and I'm a little disappointed," commented Roth.

Two positions behind him, Fabio Püntener crossed the finish line. He rode furiously up to fifth place in the meantime, but was unable to keep up with the group in the final. Püntener loses his ninth place due to a broken chain 300 meters before the finish. "But I'm over the moon with my race," Püntener nevertheless states.

Grod rode well, but poorly rewarded

Austrian Laura Stigger wins the junior women's race. Stigger takes the expected gold ahead of France's Loana Lecomte and Denmark's Carolin Bohe. Nadia Grod is the best Swiss woman in fourth place, missing out on the medals by over a minute.


"It was too fast at the start, once again. It was too risky for me to keep up, otherwise it would have chased me away at some point," explains Nadia Grod at the finish. As a result, the three medal winners got away from her in the 2.5-kilometre starting lap.

When the German Ronja Eibl crashed, Grod moved up to fourth place, but she was unable to make up any time on the bronze medal. In the end, she was 2:16 minutes behind Laura Stigger (53:23), who won 33 seconds ahead of Loana Lecomte and 1:11 minutes ahead of Caroline Bohe. Grod finished in a good fourth place. She is satisfied with her performance, but of course not with the leather medal. "Nobody likes fourth place," she shakes her head.Lara Krähemann finished in eleventh place, but lost positions again in the final round. "After the disappointment of the Swiss Championships, I'm satisfied. I felt great and found a good pace."

In the battle for gold, Austria's Laura Stigger managed to pull away from her French companion after half the distance and cruised to a commanding victory as the favorite. Stigger, who belongs to the younger age group, also won the UCI Junior Series race in Gränichen at the beginning of June.

MTB European Championships Darfo Boario Terme/ITA, XCO U19 Men & Women
Men Juniors
1.	Jofre Estape Cullell (ESP)	0:59.18,30
2.	Alexandre Balmer (SUI)	1:00.29,12	+01.11
3.	Benjamin Le Ny (FRA)	1:00.38,80	+01.21
4.	Mathis Azzaro (FRA)	1:01.11,97	+01.54
5.	Tomer Zaltsman (ISR)	1:01.13,23	+01.55
6.	Edoardo Xillo (ESP)	1:01.24,67	+02.07
7.	Pierre Chabaud (FRA)	1:01.48,85	+02.31
8.	Joel Roth (SUI)	1:01.55,83	+02.38
9.	Tim Meier (GER)	1:02.07,16	+02.49
10.	Jørgen Anmarkrud (NOR)	1:02.21,26	+03.03
11.	Fabio Püntener (SUI)	1:02.31,37	+03.13
20.	Jorin Gabriel (SUI)	1:04.07,99	+04.50
34.	Eric Lüthi (SUI)	1:06.13,75	+06.56
37.	Nico Zünd (SUI)	1:06.46,41	+07.29
Women Juniors
1.	Laura Stigger (AUT)	0:53.23,27
2.	Loana Lecomte (FRA)	0:53.55,54	+00.33
3.	Caroline Bohe (DEN)	0:54.33,51	+01.11
4.	Nadja Grod (SUI)	0:55.39,23	+02.16
5.	Marika Tovo (ITA)	0:55.48,43	+02.26
15.	Lara Krähenmann (SUI)	1:01.02,27	+07.39
20.	Tina Züger (SUI)	1:02.44.75	+09.22