Warming up in Megalopolis

It would have been great to continue with the beautiful blue sky the Southern Greece presented to the 2011 FIM Women’s Motocross World Championship riders at their arrival but that was unfortunately not meant to be. Overcast skies turned dark and the rain came down for the first ever qualifying race for these WMX riders.  After a windy event just a week ago in Sevlievo, Bulgaria, the girls were in fact needing something less challenging this time although some of them appreciated the pouring rain mentioning that the track was actually ‘too fast’ during the first part of the day. With the rain and subsequent mud, the WMX class ended the day with the premiere of the qualifying race which is part of the new format for this year’s championship. At the beginning of the day a very confident Chiara Fontanesi said, teasing Laier, that some change was needed on the top of the results lists as it was becoming too repetitive. Well, the young Italian rider did just that on Saturday’s pre- qualifying practice and later on the qualifying race by winning it with a comfortable margin of 8 seconds after managing the gap between her and Steffi Laier for most of the race. Nevertheless, according to the Red Bull Teka KTM factory rider that was only possible due to the problems the KTM’s rear tyre presented during all race: “there must have been something wrong going on with the tyre’s mousse, maybe spinning on itself, I don’t know, I was going off the track with weird lines and almost jumping out of the bike, it wasn’t easy.” Even with this misfortune Laier hold on the same pace for most of the race, tailing Fontanesi and building a good gap for the other KTM mounted German, Larissa Papenmeier: “At the beginning the qualifying felt like a normal race but when the track started to get too slippery I just though that third place was ok, I just kept the place and let them go,” said the Sarholz rider. The most exciting fight of the day was the one for the fourth position on the grid with Francesca Nocera getting the best out of Marianne Veenstra after an intense battle that went on until both crossing the finish line with the Dutch rider finishing fifth but less than a second behind! With all this agitation for fourth position going on Sara Pettersson lost ground for the pair finishing sixth in front of Anne Borchers, who surely like this Megalopolis circuit as they’re both being very fast since the first free-practice session.