It should be noted that the two days of competition over the weekend were very intense and exhausting, with the participants having to tackle up to 11 special tests in four laps, each of them very technical, very dusty and with summer temperatures of up to 36 degrees, which made the riders even tougher.
The traditional SuperTest was held again on Friday night. On Saturday, Adrià Sánchez started an outstanding first lap, attacking, but the special stages, very dry, degraded quickly and Adrià was losing his grip, finishing in 9th position in the J1 class, while in the large Junior class he was 16th. On Sunday, with even more broken special stages and the excessive effort of the previous day, the driver from Tossa de Mar struggled to find the right pace, and as a result, he finished 11th in J1, while in the overall Junior class he finished 20th.
Although the race in Valpaços was not scoring for the Women's class, the British Rosie Rowett took advantage of the race to register in the Open2 class, with the aim of training for next week's final round of the World Championship also in Portugal, where she is in third place in her category with 80 points. Rosie, in addition to completing some good kilometres of tough special stages, finished the two days in fourth position, competing in the same category as the boys.
The Rieju Factory Team riders are now preparing for the last race of the World Championship, which will be held again in Portugal, in the town of ST. Andre/Santiago do Cacem, from 6 to 8 October.
Adrià Sánchez:
“On Saturday I tried to push from the start, on the first lap I was doing well, but after the second lap the specials broke down and I was losing time. On Sunday I woke up very tired due to the effort of the previous day, so I struggled to find the feeling and the necessary pace, finishing out of a desired position”.
Rosie Rowett:
“A very slow start on Saturday with the heat and the transfer be very challenging and a crash in the first extreme set me back but I pushed on to finish the race and Sunday a lot better day getting use to the heat and pushing harder over all a very positive weekend and good practice for the woman’s world enduro next weekend”.
