New season at the doorstep
2013 season is at the doorstep despite the cruel winter time persisting in most parts of Slovakia.
After our first this year race experience in Western Sahara, Morocco, the racing season starts in Europe as well. Six riders of our team will take part in UCI 1.2 race in a one-day race Košice-Miškolc: Čanecký, Zrelica, Bátora, Fraňo, Debnár and Viglaský to be precise. These riders will take the opportunity to get some fast kilometres in their legs before heading for a UCI 2.2 stage race Tour de Maroc in Morocco the following week. Race consists of 10 stages and totals 1.650km. Martin Haring will prepare for his mostly MTB season in a national MTB team training camp in Croatia during the same time.
Riders staying in Slovakia will participate in the first race of the season, Prievidza road marathon in the meantime. Complete 9-member team this time also including Palčák, Haring, Novák and our two women, Vojtášová and Hanesová, will take part in the first two Slovak cups in Suchá nad Parnou. Later on, six riders will participate in UCI one day races in Banja-Luka Belgrade, Serbia. Riders will end this first racing block by two rounds of Slovak cup races in Dudince and Krupina and by a UCI 1.2 race Memorial Trochanovsky, Poland. MTB riders will head for their first UCI C2 and Slovak cup in MTB races during this time and our women will compete in a road stage race of UCI 2.2 classification Grácia Orlová, Czech Republic.
„Our racing schedule is pretty full in the beginning of the season. We do lack a little bit the spring volume riding due to really bad weather conditions, but the weather has been pretty crazy in most parts of Europe this year, so we should’t be the only ones affected by this fact. First block of our racing consists mainly of two day racing over the weekend which should boost our performance. Unfortunatelly our traditional first race of the season, Tour de Cameroun, has been called off this year, so we will start the season directly by a really tough Tour de Maroc stage race. I believe we will benefit of the demanding racing kilometres in this race throughout all our following season. A 105th edition of a Swedish Paris-Roubaix, the Scandinavian race, Sweden, and a stage race Košice-Tatry-Košice, Slovakia, await us further in the season. We also hope to participate in the difficult Tour the Slovakia. I truly hope we will attain good results in some of these races and the whole season will evolve without any problems for us. I only wish for the weather to calm down a bit so that we don’t race in snow in the first Slovak cup mid April,“ said Martin Fraňo, manager of CK BB.
