Aneta Erlebachová: a look back at the ICF World Championship selection race at Lesná 2023

On the first weekend of September, the selection race for the World Championship in Leipa, Germany, took place at Lesná in the Ore Mountains.

The Czech national team got 102 starting places from the ICF (the organisation behind the World Championship), so the whole weekend was a fight for one of these places. Lesná has perhaps the most beautiful sunsets and wonderful nature, so I definitely recommend a visit.

The trail here is nice, very technical, with one ultra-long steep climb. This year, though, it was improved with lots, and I mean really lots, of mud. At the finish the racers looked as if they had been through a mud bath. So falls were nothing unusual, and they gave the wheeled disciplines (bikejoring and scooter) a particularly hard time. It was a two-day race, where the times from both days are added together.

Saturday

Unfortunately it didn’t go very well for us. The result Stormy and I ran was far from what we’re capable of and what we had in mind. The race just didn’t suit us at all. Something was wrong, from the start right to the finish. I couldn’t push myself at all, and Stormy wasn’t having her day either. One positive I take away, though, is the mass start, which went without any problems at all. In the end we reached the finish with the seventh-best time in our category, unfortunately with a huge deficit.

Sunday

The start was by the Gundersen method, where racers start in order and with the deficit they built up the day before. Luckily, Sunday’s race suited us noticeably better. Simply a new day, a new start. We went into the race thinking that if we were lucky, we still had a chance of being nominated. Both Stormy and I like Gundersen starts, so we had a nice race and actually quite enjoyed it. It was incomparably better than Saturday. We improved by an incredible 40 seconds, but given our big deficit from the day before, it unfortunately wasn’t enough to move up. So we stayed in 7th place.

And the best part comes last. Thanks to an increased number of participant places, we too were nominated in the end for the 2023 World Championship we had longed for. There’s still plenty to improve, our rivals are incredibly fast, so we’re getting back to hard work…

More about Aneta on the Aneta Erlebachová page.