Alexandre Balmer takes the lead on the first lap and opens up a gap of ten seconds on his pursuers. Leon Kaiser establishes himself alone in second position. Balmer extends his lead, loses it again, extends it even further. This swing in the difference to second place becomes a maximum of 45 seconds. "I always rode carefully into the long climb at the bottom, so I must have lost time," says Balmer. On the penultimate lap, he also had to take his foot off the pedal briefly on a descent and on the final lap at the last intermediate time, he only had 18 seconds on the Italian Simone Avondetto, who had now replaced the German in silver position.

However, Balmer saves his lead to the finish and celebrates his first European Junior Champion title after winning silver last year and silver on the road. "It was very difficult for my head to ride alone at the front. You never had enough to drink in the heat," admits Balmer. "I was the favorite and I'm very happy about the title. Now I've already won something and I'm no longer under quite so much pressure ahead of the World Championships in Lenzerheide."

Luca Schätti takes 13th place (+4:30). He battled for tenth place until the last lap, but in the final lap he was no longer able to hold on. "I think he was penalized. But Luca would also have preferred it to be wet," says national coach Bruno Diethelm. "But overall, the ranking is okay."

Favorite victory by Laura Stigger

On the 4.2-kilometre course with difficult climbs on rough paths, Stigger was able to pull away immediately as expected and run circles around the front. The super talent from Ötztal has already won the title of European Youth Champion three times on the same course and was also ahead last year in Darfo Boaria Terme.

Ronja Blöchlinger from Heiden, who belongs to the younger age group, is taking a tactically cautious approach to the race. "I'm normally a fast starter, but today I deliberately held back because I knew the race would be long and tough," said Blöchlinger. That paid off. Lap after lap, she was able to improve her position and ended up in a good seventh place. "I managed my strength well and am happy with my result," she comments.

Tina Züger expected a little more than eleventh place (+7:07). "I missed a bit of power in my legs and you can't do without that here. But it's no reason to be dissatisfied, you can build on that," says Züger.