Standort: fm4.ORF.at / Meldung: "A Breathless Adventure in The Dolomites"

Chris Cummins

Letters from a shrinking globe: around the day in 80 worlds.

25. 6. 2013 - 10:39

A Breathless Adventure in The Dolomites

The Sellaronda Hero claims to be "Europe`s Hardest Mountainbike Race". I had to have a go.

I`d been on my limit on the way up and on my limit on the way down: this was racing at its spectacular best. Now, two hours into the Sellaronda Hero, came a moment of comparative respite as, on the way to the peak of Pralongia, my thick tires crunching along the gravel of an undulating path, bright in the sunlight and as it wiggled its way slowly along on a yellow flower-strewn mountain ridge.

Ahead like a grey molar tooth, sticking out the green gums of the valley, was the shear rock face of a clump of Dolomites. Its the sort of view to motivate even the most breathless of mountain bikers.

bikers on the sella ronde downhill

chris cummins

87% of the race is off road and 55% is on single track, with many of the descents curving deliciously down switchbacks. These are exhilarating but rideable for the amateur, as long as you keep your backside off the rear wheel and your arms relaxed and a prayer on your lips as you lie flat over the saddle. Mountain biking, after all, should be an adventure.

Short of training and self belief after an illness and rain-affected spring, I`d been very apprehensive of my start place in a race that the organisers like to call “Europe`s hardest mountain bike race.” Now, a third of the way in, feeling surprisingly strong as I climbed up to Pralongia, I was glad that I had bitten the bullet.

chris cummins

The course is a circuit of the Sella Massif, the imposing 9km wide block of stone that dominates this part of the Dolomites. The crags, which ascend from the valley's snow-covered steps and make the massif look like a giant grey wedding cake, are a constant source of orientation for the riders. Keeping them as a marker on your right, you start at 11 o´clock at Selva Val Gardena (Wolkenstein in German), and arduously make your way around clockwise, taking in five major climbs and five hair-raising descents as you pass by the valleys of Badia, Fassa and Fodom until, hopefully, you make it back to the Val Gardena.

I owed my good start to the expertise of Marathon MTB`s Mike Blewitt, an Australian who has been riding big mountain bike races for a decade now. A multiple veteran of the TransAlp, the Croc Trophy, and the Cape Epic, he`d dragged me out of bed at 5 a.m. insisting we ate three hours before the start of the race. Cursing him at the time, I appreciated his wisdom later. The route opened with a climb to Dantercepies that would take us up 750m of altitude in just over 6km. With that sort of lung-busting exertion, you really don't want your stomach in your mouth.

So rubbing the sleep from our eyes, we`d hunted down a bakery that opened early, and sat there loading up on sugar and sipping creamy Italian cappuccino and looked up at the craggy limestone of the Sella massif. At that time of the morning the rock was gravestone grey and foreboding.

The Elite Battle It Out

The race is part of the UCI World Series, and alongside hobby riders like me, some of the world`s elites were testing themselves of the World Championships in Kirchberg in Tyrol next week.

sally bigham

chris cummins

On the way back down to the hotel we bumped into Sally Bigham, the defending UCI World Series champion.

She already had her kit on and was warming up on fix-wheeled trainer and said was delighted to be in Val Gardena: “I’ve never been here before but I’ve heard so much about it and I love the Italian Dolomites. For me there`s no place quite so special as here.” She said she hoped the course wouldn`t be too steep. It clearly wasn`t – she ended up winning the race, a full 13 minutes ahead of her nearest rival Italy’s Elena Gaddoni.

Swallowing The Bumps

As Sally was back in her hotel room in triumphant repose, I was only half way around the course and beginning to struggle. Up until the 42km mark, I`d been having the ride of my life. The single track down to Corvara took us on snaking turns through the panoramic scenery and over wooden bridges that crossed mountain streams.

It was glorious. My borrowed bike swallowed the bumps with ease and my spirits were soaring as the Alpine cattle watched my progress with scepticism. The second descent of the ride which ran parallel to the Campolongo pass was even more thrilling. It ducked in and out of pine forests and the sunlight was dappled on the route strewn, pockmarked tracks.

the sella ronde race in full flow!

chris cummins

There was instant camaraderie with the field of riders. Strangers helped each other with mechanical defects. I`d never been in such a big field. There were over 3,000 riders from 30 nations. This was only the 4th running of the event, but the grandiose scenery has clearly marked it out as a young classic.

The World Championships will be run here in the year 2015, a hundred years after the mountain passes were ripped apart by the senseless fighting of World War I where many a conscript, often plucked from the plains of Hungary, earned the right to call himself a genuine hero.

A Little Hero

Back at the hobby-riders' end of the field you have time to think about these things because ou`re always only really racing yourself. But the most fun was the interaction with the locals who shouted encouragement in Italian, and particularly with my true hero: this little boy who was filling water bottles from his trackside farmhouse.

a little boy hands out water at the Sella Ronda

chris cummins

The full-length men`s race covers 84km and 4,300 vertical metres of vertical climbing and although I´d taken the “easier” route which just covered 62km and 3,300 vertical metres, the race broke me in the end.

It wasn`t the height of the climbs that destroyed my spirit, it was the gradient – I`d never ridden any thing so steep. When I finished the Hero, I`d lost my voice from being out of breath, and I was coughing from lung-strain.

Things started to fall apart for me as I was been caught in the rain on the descent down from Passo Pordoi with falling riders lining the now slippery single track.

Muddy Traffic Jams

Suddenly the numbers had become a problem and pile-ups a threat. I had to dart right after a rider in front slipped and dropped off a big rock, only landing safely due to good luck and the strength of my borrowed fully-suspension bike.

the tricky snowy bit on the Sella Ronda

chris cummins

Alerted by loud grumbles of thunder, I`d looked up and seen a second big storm approaching as I started the treacherous final ascent to the Passo Sella, but I was struggling to keep the wheels turning never mind race home. By this time, I was by now cycling so slowly that I was making no ground up on the competitors ahead who had dismounted and were pushing. That sort of thing can crush the most resilient of souls. From that point on, survival was my only priority.

As I reached the top of the final pass I cycled into a hailstorm. The balls of ice falling through the slits of my helmet and then, on the final 10km decent, torrential rain turning what should have been a triumphant cruise into a slippery mud fest as we rushed through the Citta dei Sassi, a dramatic landscape of boulders resulting from an avalanche on the Sassolungo hundreds of years ago.

My arms were tense and my touch was too heavy on the handlebars and, exhausted, I rode clumsily slipping over on what should have been as easy section. If you’re a hobby rider, this event can really take it out of you. The elation comes only after the hot shower. As I crossed the line, saddle-sore and leg-dead, I could only offer the photographers a grimace. I was completely empty.

climbers on the sella ronde race

chris cummins

But that night, reinvigorated with some Tyrolean stodge, I felt proud to have been part of it. To take part in an event like the SellaRonda you have to be prepared to suffer. But the human body is remarkable at recovery.

Early the next morning, with the sub lighting up the slabs of rock pink, the stiffness is already fading, and you look back up at the tracks heading up to the theatre of peaks thinking you could have, no you should have, ridden it better. Next year you will find more time for training, next year you will eat better, next year you will be more mentally tough.

It is not a sense of achievement, it is a sense of longing. The bike bug has got you. There is no escape.