28 years, that's a classic/ Sant Andreu De La Barca

I have been asked quite a few times already, "Marcelo, have you fully come back to racing?"
Well, let me start by saying this, I have not quite considered this as a comeback, actually, I never quit, I simply took a step aside, took this in a more relaxed way, and right now, I go to events and places that for one or other reason, I feel interested or simply have never been to. This is exactly the case of SANT ANDREU DE LA BARCA; This is a race that takes place in a town near Barcelona and believes it or not, it's been 28 years since the first event that they did there 28 editions of the race. Not even Fort William or Mont Saint Anne are so old.
For some reason, I never managed to go to this event during my full-on racing years, simply too busy or could not make it on time for it. But I definitely felt that this event was one of those classics that I needed to attend, so once the possibility of going to it this year was open, I did not hesitate on taking it.

I have to say that this year's race caught me off-guard, let's call it lack of planning, let's call it too long without racing DH. The case is that naively, I did not consider the chance of raining there since every single video, photos, etc that I watched from the event, was sunny, dusty, and good weather. Well, relying on this, I happily packed my flip flops, my dark lenses, and my dry tires. What I was not counting on was that after months of no rain, right for the first day of practice, the forecast was 100% chance of heavy rain all day long. yes! all day long and 80% chance for race day. So in the end, we had a pretty wet and cold race.



In the end, the rain not only made things harder or spicier but in a way it helped me to be more competitive the quite a few really fast locals since this changed their advantage. I have learned that you always have to find the light in the dark times and this was my motivation to smile and give my best in these cold and wet conditions.
Sant Andreu is a short and intense track, it used to be really physical, but it is not anymore, being simple, without many line choices, and in a way easy but really cool, this makes racing pretty tight, there's no room for mistakes and times have small margins.



With a time of 2 minutes and 1 second, I ended up in 4th place, less than 2 seconds behind the world cup legend and local hero, Ivan Oulego. At 45 years old he showed us how it gets done and after having been in all of the 28 editions, he managed to step on the top spot of this race.