CRANS-MONTANA (SUI) – Olivia Onesti's World Cup podium climb is completed on the trails of Crans-Montana. After finishing sixth and fifth in April in Brazil, taking bronze in Nove Mesto, and ending in second place a week ago in Val di Sole, the 20-year-old Frenchwoman took victory among the Under-23s in the fifth round of the Whoop UCI Mountain Bike World Series (in the photo by Maxime Schmid, Olivia at the finish).
A historic achievement, both for the transalpine athlete and for the team directed by Luca Bramati, which has never been so high in these four years of activity.
And to say that the race for Olivia Onesti had started in the worst way: the athlete failed to engage her left pedal, being swallowed up by the bunch. But, lap by lap, climb by climb, the Frenchwoman climbed the ranking, pulling back on Madigan Munro and left her behind thanks to her impressive uphill pace.
«It wasn’t easy, because the mud made it difficult to stay in the saddle, both uphill and downhill», confirmed the winner. «There is a lot of hard work behind this steadily growing season; work for which I have to thank the team and my family who have always been by my side».
Indeed, the team also played its part in this Swiss journey.
«We tried to calm Olivia down, both when she had to come back and when she was in the lead», the statements of the sports director Luca Bramati. «The rest was done by what we built in these days in Switzerland: the choice of tires made the difference, allowing the athlete to express herself at her best; not forgetting the trials of the course: Christian Bernardi escorted our girls, letting them discover the secrets of the track».
So the Italian manager and former athlete ideally returns to the top step of the World Cup podium, 27 years after his success in Napa Valley in 1997.

«Better as an athlete or as a sports director? Paradoxically, as an athlete you enjoy it more; in this case I only breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Olivia enter the final straight. There were impressive sections from a technical point of view, and the mud made everything even more difficult and uncertain. Mistakes were always around the corner, but Olivia did very well; as did Lucia Bramati, who finished 26th, moving up from the 43rd: not an easy target in a track in which the overtakes were very difficult».
Demonstrating the difficulty rate of the Swiss course, Nicole Pesse, one of the best athletes in the technical sections, fell in the course test yesterday; the biker from Aosta, who started in the second row after Friday's brilliant short track, tried to throw herself into the fray, but threw in the towel after the first lap.