Mathieu van der Poel clearly lived up to his position as favorite. Only on lap one, when he had already opened up a gap, did his first European title on a mountain bike come under threat. Van der Poel rolls over on a descent. He is lucky that neither the bike nor he himself are damaged.
He has to recover a little for one lap, but then he launches another attack and escapes the competition.

"It was clear today that if someone doesn't have a bad day today, they can't be beaten," says Florian Vogel. He is referring to Van der Poel. "I didn't even try to keep up with him and didn't ride the attacks either, but stuck to my rhythm."

Ondrej Cink in front of his home crowd in the Czech Republic or last year's runner-up Luca Braidot from Italy, ensure that the pace increases, Thomas Litscher also takes the lead of the chasing pack at times, but Vogel doesn't let himself get rattled. This conservative way of racing saves enough energy to be able to increase the pace himself on the penultimate lap.
"The pace dropped in the group and I was afraid that the next group would catch up from behind. I thought, now you have to do something," says Vogel.

He manages to escape from the four-man chasing group, Cink loses the connection and drops back to twelfth place in the end, Luca Braidot can no longer keep up and Litscher also loses the connection.
Vogel's Dutch teammate at KMC Ekoi Orbea, Milan Vader, moves up from behind, but he can no longer catch up with Vogel.
"My routine certainly played a role today. The silver medal means a lot to me. I won my first European Championship medal 21 years ago as a junior and to still be in the mix now makes me proud. Standing on the podium next to people like Mathieu van der Poel is an honor," commented Vogel.

Reto Indergand rides a consistent race and repeats his fifth place from last year in Glasgow. He reaches the finish line 1:24 minutes behind in front of a large crowd of spectators.
"I wanted a good start from 25th position, but I didn't want to overdo it. I think it was better than the last World Cups and I can be satisfied," said Indergand.

Thomas Litscher, who was in the medals for a long time, finished eighth (+1:57). "I'm just the type to give it a go. I died three times, got up again three times. In the end, there wasn't much missing, but I almost collapsed from the heat, I was freezing all of a sudden," said Litscher

Lars Forster came eleventh, Andri Frischknecht 14th and 15th place went to Matthias Stirnemann.


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