Defending champion Mathias Flückiger makes a cautious start to the Swiss elite championship race. Coming back from the first lap in fourth place, he takes up the chase after Nino Schurter, who is already a few seconds ahead. The two duelists then ride away from the rest of the competition together.

However, Schurter doesn't let it come down to the end of the race and launches the decisive attack on the penultimate lap. Flückiger has no chance of maintaining the gap and even drops back a little. "I ran out of energy towards the end. I suspect that the heat played a role here," Flückiger analyzes the key moment in the race at the finish. "I would have loved to defend the jersey. I did my best and am therefore satisfied with my performance." In the end, Schurter wins by a good minute ahead of Flückiger.

Matthias Stirnemann and Florian Vogel are in pursuit of the two front runners. The two club colleagues from the organizing RC Gränichen go together until the last round, in which Vogel then rides the best lap time. The 37-year-old thus secures the bronze medal, just under half a minute ahead of Stirnemann.

Co-favorite Andri Frischknecht is unable to compete for the medal places. He joins the surprising Simon Vitzthum during the race and is able to break away from the Rheintaler towards the end. Frischknecht finishes fifth, Vitzthum sixth.

Schurter brought about the decision in the second-to-last lap.

Neff defends title with incredible solo

In the women's race, Jolanda Neff more than lived up to expectations and defended her Swiss title unchallenged. After the starting lap, she rode into a gap of around 50 seconds on Ramona Forchini in the first big round and continued to lead the pace
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Local hero Kathrin Stirnemann then rides past Forchini and from then on the positions are set. Neff wins with a lead of almost five minutes over Stirnemann, who defends her second place against Forchini and thus wins the silver medal. "I didn't expect to be rewarded with the silver medal. But I knew that my form was good and it's always great at home. The fans carried me," said a delighted Stirnemann.

Ramona Forchini now takes the bronze medal after winning silver last year and says: "It was tough after two bad weeks with a cold. But in view of that, I'm really happy with the bronze medal, even though I originally had a different goal."

Corina Gantenbein's fourth place is also a small surprise. The athlete from Graubünden struggled with health problems for a long time and only returned to racing action in Nove Mesto.
Fifth place goes to Linda Indergand

Neff defended her Swiss champion title with a lead of almost five minutes.

Colombo wins again

In the U23 men's race, Filippo Colombo wins the Swiss title once again. Until the penultimate lap, he was still part of the three-man leading group with Joel Roth from Gränich and Vital Albin. But then the Ticino rider ignited the afterburner and said goodbye to his rivals, defending his title.

Roth is then able to fend off a strong Alexandre Balmer. He takes silver ahead of the junior world champion from Lenzerheide.
Albin, on the other hand, collapses and has to settle for sixth place.

Sina Frei wins the Swiss U23 women's title almost as easily as Neff. She also pulled away on the first big lap and extended her lead to just over two minutes. The silver medal goes to Nicole Koller, while the bronze award goes to Léna Mettraux, who is almost another eight minutes behind.

Lillo ahead of Baumann

Janis Baumann was the favorite at the start of the junior race and ended up winning silver. He fought a tough battle with Dario Lillo right to the end, leading to a sprint that Lillo won and the coveted champion's jersey. Robin Kull takes the bronze award.

Unsurprisingly, Jacqueline Schneebeli won the junior Swiss title. However, her lead over silver medal winner Ronja Blöchlinger is somewhat more surprising. The co-favorite loses over three minutes to Schneebeli. As with the U23 and elite women, the new junior champion also pulled away on the first lap.