Updated: Martin Stošek is double Czech champion

Martin Stošek, riding for the Canyon SIDI team we support, added the title of Czech champion in gravel to the title of Czech champion in the marathon, in both cases of course in the Elite category.First, he won the Czech Gravel Championship in Hlinsko and a week later he did not give his rivals a chance in Karlovy Vary, where the National Marathon Championship was held. And if in Hlinsko he reached the finish line with a comfortable lead of almost 4 minutes, in Karlovy Vary he won with an even bigger lead - nearly seven minutes.
'It was nice, I liked the track a lot, it was hard and fair. I expected it to be fast right from the start. Surprisingly, there were already just three of us very early on, I think from about the seventh kilometre. At kilometre 52 on a steep climb, I felt like we were slowing down, so I tried to go at a sharper pace and quite quickly built up a lead, which I hadn't planned. I continued on my own and it ended up being a solid lead. But it caught up with me a little bit, the track wasn't easy. I didn't have to go so fast towards the end, but it was a championship race and just like a week ago (in Hlinsko) I wanted to be safe," said Martin about his second champion title.Martin further added: "It's nice, it's only my second title and I remembered five years ago - in the first year of our team - when Kristian and I came in first and second. A lot of time and races have passed since then and we are still here with Kristian and Giovanni. We had a great time at the finish, there were Helen, (Martin's wife) dad and friends from Pilsen, so it was great," said Martin.And how was the Championship at Gravel in Hlinsko?

The race was held in a packed competition of many elite Czech riders and right from the start, it was speedy. Nevertheless, the starting field stayed together at the beginning of the race, which resulted in several crashes that eliminated some title hopefuls.After that, the starting field was divided, with five riders remaining in the leading group: Martin Stošek (Canyon SIDI), Tomáš Kalojíros (Pierre Baguette), Petr Vakoč (Canyon Integray L27), Marek Bartůněk (Česká spořitelna Accolade) and Karel Hník (D2Mont Merida).With 30 km to go Martin tried to pull away from his rivals with a hard attack and he succeeded, but nobody caught his pace and gradually built up a promising lead, which was almost four minutes at the finish.

"The gravel title means a lot to me because I don't have many domestic titles in the elite category, only one from the marathon and that's five years old. So I'm very happy about this fact. Gravel is close to marathon, which is my main discipline, it's very endurance and not very technical, so I had an advantage there. The starting field was packed, which I liked, there were people from the road, from bikes, from cyclocross, a varied competition", said Martin.