"I didn't really attack anywhere, I just pushed the pace a little on the second half of the course. That was enough to maintain my lead," says Huber, who won the Swiss championship title for the third time on the same course two years ago. Last year, he finished third behind Adrien Chenaux and Andreas Moser.

Moser is also over the moon. For a long time, it looked as if last year's runner-up would not be able to reach the podium this time. Huber, Chenaux, the Belgian marathon champion Frans Claes and the Frenchman Emeric Turcat were ahead of him. But after crossing the finish line first, the Bernese rider was able to mobilize new strength on the second half of the course. He first overtakes Claes and then Turcat. "Of course, that was like a booster for my motivation," says Moser. And then, on the descent, Adrien Chenaux suddenly found himself at the side of the course with a defect. Moser: "I didn't think it would be enough for second place again. Brilliant!" The unlucky guy of the day is Adrien Chenaux: "First I crashed on a snow field. Then there was the tire failure on the final descent, which took too much time to repair," explained Chenaux, visibly disappointed at the finish.


Ariane Lüthi achieved a start-to-finish victory in the women's race. Like Huber, she also became Swiss marathon champion at the Raid Evolenard in 2016. The joy over her latest triumph is correspondingly great. "It went perfectly," says Lüthi. Last year's winner Andrea Ming, on the other hand, had to suffer until she had her second place in the bag. She says: "I felt muscle cramps in my legs on the final climb. I've never had that before."

The 35-kilometer route once again counted as the fourth round of the Garmin Bike Cup. Just like last year, Nicolas Lüthi won the men's competition by a wide margin. Ilona Chavaillaz came out on top in the women's race. She improves the course record to 2 hours 05 minutes.

For the organizers, who had invested a lot of work in the run-up to the event to make the course passable with the severe damage caused by the winter, the event ends to their complete satisfaction: with 770 participants, the event achieves a new record number of participants.