Sunday, April 27, 2025

Zürich Four Days 2011 – Getting Ready

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HomeDiariesZürich Four Days 2011 - Getting Ready

Monday passed in a trice – a motorway is motorway and a Formule 1 hotel is a Formule 1 hotel. We’re getting ready for the Zürich Four Days 2011…

Zürich Four Days 2011
Jesper and Kris look refreshed and ready for the day ahead.

Tuesday

It’s 14:15 pm and hard to imagine the building site I’m sitting in the midst of will be hosting the Zürich Four Days 2011 in a little over 24 hours.

But it has to – first and foremost, the sixes are a business proposition.

The main reason the Zürich ‘6’ is now the Zürich ‘4’ is money – the organisers are hoping that they’ll maybe get perhaps not six, but maybe five days worth of paying punters in the door in four days.

Zürich Four Days 2011
The cote d’azur gets laid down.

The track is hired for the duration, this structure used to be used in the South Holland, Cremona (Italy) and Munich Six Days – all sadly missed.

The track, cabins, PA, and bar all come as a package.

Pete Jacques is here, working on the track; part of one of the teams of joiners who work around the clock to get the straights and bankings in place, advertising painted, cabins erected and the bar ready to take those vital kegs.

Zürich Four Days 2011
Jacquesy gets the boards down.

We didn’t have too much of a drive this morning, maybe two hours, to Franco Marvulli’s house in Oerlikon, a suburb of Zürich.

Jesper is staying with Franco tonight, before he checks-in to the race hotel – it all helps save those precious Suisse Francs and Euros.

We hope to get setup here, today – the main cabin that is, the trackside cabins won’t be ready ’til tomorrow.

Zürich Four Days 2011
No cabins ready at this stage.

It’s Thursday afternoon and Tuesday seems a long time ago but we did indeed set up the main cabin; giving us a head start over the other soigneurs – most important !

The race hotel is really nice – but five miles from the track, I guess you can’t have everything.

We dined in a basement pizza restaurant in the interests of the team budget but a basic pizza and a Coke were 18 Euros – each.

Zürich Four Days 2011
Hard to believe we’ll be racing on this tomorrow.
Ed Hood
Ed Hood
Ed was involved in cycling for over 50 years. In that time he was a successful time triallist, a team manager and a sponsor of several teams and clubs. He was also a respected and successful coach and during the winter months often worked in the cabins at the Six Days for some of the world's top riders. Ed was a highly respected journalist, his tales of chasing the Giro, Tour, Vuelta, Classics and World Championships - and his much-loved winter Six Days - are legendary, never the same twice, they gave our site an edge other cycling media could never duplicate or challenge. Sadly Ed passed away in January 2025, two years after suffering a devastating stroke.

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