New opponents every race and the winner is always the same: Nino Schurter has to deal with the Frenchman Titouan Carod and the German Manuel Fumic for a long time in Mont Saint Anne. The latter put a lot of pressure on him for three laps. "Manuel was strong, he made me suffer quite a bit a few times," admits Nino Schurter. But sometimes the pace is slowed down, so that the Frenchman Tempier gets closer and closer from behind. Three laps before the end, Nino Schurter therefore attacked Marmotte on the climb. "I thought the party was getting too big now and actually wanted to ride away with Fumic. But then he had some kind of problem, I don't know, and so I was alone," Schurter explains the decisive situation.

He doesn't push the pace to the maximum afterwards, "because you always have to be careful in the technical sections", but he still keeps Titouan Carod at a distance. He doesn't get any closer than ten seconds, on the contrary. He had to let his compatriot Tempier pass him at the end and also lost the sprint for third place to Kerschbaumer. However, Nino Schurter is the first rider to triumph for the fifth time in a row within a season. "That gave me even more motivation. I don't know when I'll be in this position next time," he says with a laugh at the finish. And, of course: "If I'm already this far, I also want to complete the season," he says with a view to the final in Val di Sole. In hindsight, Schurter also believes that it was right for him to skip the European Championships: "I was able to train well again and I think that was an advantage."

Mathias Flückiger might also have been able to climb the podium. However, Flückiger suffered a defect on lap three of seven and dropped back to 15th place. "Too bad about the defect. It would probably have been enough for top five today, but probably nothing more. I struggled at the start, so the break with the puncture wasn't bad at all (laughs). After that I had problems finding my rhythm again. Once I did, it went relatively well," commented Flückiger.Reto Indergand is riding his race with a deliberately cautious strategy. He worked his way up from 20th place after the start lap to tenth position. "I wanted to take a cautious approach to the race today so that I could pull it off. In the last few races, I've always slumped, so I didn't want to take any risks. That paid off," said a happy Indergand after the race.

Thomas Litscher misses the world championship standard of top eight in eleventh place (+2:33), although he rides a good race. He is a good half minute off eighth place. "A good race, but unfortunately I missed the target. As the fourth-best Swiss, I've actually shown enough," he says, somewhat disappointed. He rode the penultimate lap like the last one because everyone in his group thought they were already at the end. "Then of course I ran out of energy on the really last lap," says Litscher.