After the disappointment at the Olympics: Kerschbaumer speaks plainly

Italy's mountain bikers experienced a real Olympic debacle in Izu, west of Tokyo. Gerhard Kerschbaumer came in 20th as the best Azzurro . But no one was happy with it. “It's just not my year, even though I tried to do my best. “It didn’t go as I expected,” said Kerschbaumer, extremely disappointed. The 30-year-old Verdinger crossed the finish line around four and a half minutes after the victorious Briton Thomas Pidcock. Despite a fairly good start, he soon fell behind. He wasn't in his best form and the preparation wasn't going well. “Gery”, who had always trained individually in recent years, this time completed a “completely new” training program, elaborately put together by coaching teams. He listened to the wrong people and used the wrong methods. “Every athlete is different and I now know that this wasn’t the right thing for me,” emphasized Kerschbaumer. He wants to go his “own path” again in the future. “I’m just not the type of person who trains according to studies and turns sport into a science,” said the 30-year-old. The Olympics would have been his big goal. “I’m sorry about this result. But I brought this on myself. You have to learn from defeats and act,” said Kerschbaumer. “I have to say clearly: That was nothing.” Gerhard Kerschbaumer Because of the many interval training sessions he started well, but after that hardly anything worked. “I have to say clearly: That was nothing,” he summed it up. Although he “bit until the end” and had nothing to blame himself mentally, he was simply not physically capable of achieving top performance. He also doesn't have high hopes for the World Cup, which will take place at Sulzberg at the end of August. “If I get into the top 10, that will be a success this year,” explained Kerschbaumer. He is not the type of person who drives one race poorly and one brilliantly: “Either I am consistently strong in a season or I struggle.” Worse result “hard to imagine” National coach Mirko Celestino was also disappointed with the performance of his athletes: “We’re not looking for excuses, it was simply a bad race.” We knew that the fight for a medal would be very difficult, but we still expected much more. An even worse result is “hard to imagine”. The national coach made it clear that such placements were not what the mountain bike Azzurri wanted. “Our athletes usually finish in the top 10,” emphasized Celestino.

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After the disappointment at the Olympics: Kerschbaumer speaks plainly

Monday was anything but successful for Italy's mountain bikers. The contracting agent Gerhard Kerschbaumer found clear words after the race.

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