Round 3 of the 2015 4X ProTour was held in a town called Szczawno Zdroj (pronounced Sch-av-no Stroy) in Poland.
Scott, still battling some huge injury problems, again entered this race in less than perfect condition and accordingly restricted his practice time to just 5 runs over the 5 hour session. In pain, like at every other race this year, Scott was stretching and doing everything to a plan that had been formulated by his physios to try and maximise his race performance.
After his last practice run – the Go Pro course preview for PinkBike (with commentary), Scott was ready for qualifying.
Qualifying began, and with Scott currently leading the 4X ProTour overall and being the highest ranked UCI rider (currently 2nd) at the event, he was the last rider to qualify. Understandably, his gate was mediocre, but his track speed again, like previous rounds, looked great. Across the finish line and Scott was just 0.08 off the fastest time and qualified in 2nd. The top 10 were separated by less than a second, showing just how deep the talent pool is in 4X right now.
On to the racing. Scott won his early rounds and looked comfortable out on the track. In his semi final, he would race overall series contender Quentin Derbier from France. Scott took gate 1, Derbier in 2, Simon Waldburger in 3 and Alex Metcalfe. Scott made a great start but instantly Derbier was gone. A broken chain out of the start saw him crash out of the race. What looked like a hard semi final on paper, turned out to be a lot easier!
So Scott was in his 3rd consecutive final of 2015.
Fastest qualifier Hannes Slavik took 1, Scott in 2, Waldburger in 3 and Czech rider Dennis Drozd in 4. The gate dropped and Scott was in the middle of a sandwich with Hannes and Waldburger both hitting Scott’s handlebars as they tried to get the better of him. In turn 1 Scott made a really aggressive move and dived inside. He lost a bit of traction and that was just enough for Slavik to pass by on the outside. Scott was in second and did well to hold the position in turn 2. From there Scott settled into 2nd but unfortunately Slavik was too far ahead.
