December 2010
Short cyclo-cross season
Just like last year, Jempy Drucker resumed competition for his cyclo-cross season in Leudelange, even though this winter campaign will be completely different for him than last year's. In fact, there will be no world championships in his program this season and his only goal will be the Luxemburg Nationals in Preizerdaul since he has to focus again on road-racing as of late January with some highlights waiting for him in the early season: the Flemish spring classics.
Results:
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| GP Julien Cajot Leudelange
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Lars Boom
5th at 2'26"
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| Fidea Cyclo-cross Tervuren
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Niels Albert
22nd at 6'06"
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| Luxembourg Nationals
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Jempy Drucker
winner
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Of course, Jempy takes it a bit easier this way, but his form is quite good. A solid road season with a busy automn schedule have provided him with the necessary
Lars Boom
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backdrop to take a good start into the cyclo-cross season, even without any specific training. Just like for Lars Boom, who was invincible in Leudelange and took off right after the start for a long solo ride. But behind him, Jempy was able to improve after a bad start and, one after one, he passed the riders in front of him to move up into fourth position, together with Tom Van den Bosch. Towards the end of the race, last year's winner dropped Drucker, but the Luxemburgish champ was able to hold onto his fifth position unitl the conclusion on the icy course, 2'26" behind Lars Boom. The win of the Dutch champion has never been in doubt and he arrived at the finish one minute ahead of Ben Berden and Jonathan Page, who took second and third positions.
After the races of Kopstal and Differdange were cancelled, Jempy didn't have any more opportunities to show his talents in December, but he continued training in order to be in decent shape at his unique confrontation with the world's top riders, beginning of January in Tervuren. On the difficult course that combined melting snow with mud, the champion of Luxemburg showed another decent performance and finished in 22nd position, 6 minutes behind winner Niels Albert.
Niels Albert
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Jempy rode his laps together with some old friends like the Dutch renner Ramon Sinkeldam, who has often battled hard with him in the youth categories, or former Tour de Luxemburg stage winner Bram Schmitz, whom he has often met this summer in the Continental road race circuit. At the end and despite his lack in competition, Drucker missed the Top 20 out of 46 starters by a few seconds only and left behind him some valuable riders like former European champion Vincent Bastaens, Jan Verstraeten or Slovakian National champion Robert Gavenda. The race was won by Niels Albert who had a rather bad start, but managed to bridge up later in the race to the leader Rob Peeters. In the last laps, Albert left Peters behind and resisted to the strong return of Sven Nys, who had known an even worse start than Albert. The third of the GP de Contern Rob Peeters was one of the most active riders in the field, he rode solo in the lead during the first half of an hour before finally finishing in fourth position, one place behind Tom Meeusen who has also been in Contern in late Octobre.
Everybody was of course eager to see Drucker in action at the Luxemburg National championships in Préizerdaul where, despite his good performance in Tervuren,
a little doubt concerning the outcome of the race was due to the fact that he raced only once this season against the best home riders. But Jempy made things clear very fast after a medium-rated start, when he passed everybody on the first uphill part of the course and took the lead of the race as of the first lap. At the end of the opening loop, Drucker was already several meters ahead of best U23 rider Pit Schlechter and even more on his main opponent in the elite race, Gusty Bausch, and all the others. Jempy seemed in a perfect shape today on the spectacular, muddy and extremely tough course in Preizerdaul: he made no mistake at all on the technical downhill sections, showed tremendous power on the difficult parts and chose his way through the mud with lots of experience. No wonder that the race was already decided after the second lap, as Gusty Bausch didn't have a very good start. The rider from Kayl took a few laps to pass around espoir Pit Schlechter and take second place in the race, a position that he held until the end. The third place in the elite category was again for the fantastic Pascal Triebel, who broke his derailleur on the first lap but then passed the other contenders one by one on a tailor-made course for him and took a well deserved bronze medal.
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