Ale Galán says reaching number one is now “very difficult”

“I see the number one spot as very difficult to reach,” Ale Galán admitted. He addressed the race for the top position after qualifying for the semi-finals in Düsseldorf, with his team going through a difficult run of results over recent months.

At the press conference, he was equally cautious about the Race: “To be completely honest, I think the Race is difficult. It’s a steep climb. The end of the season is still to come, but last year, here, things began to feel different and suddenly we started getting results.”

The challenge is made harder by a sizeable gap to make up: several matches have slipped away over the course of the season, leaving them 1,780 points behind in the race for number one.

Galán feels the results have not reflected the level of their play. “This year the results haven’t followed when the game was at a very high level, and at times we’ve lost matches despite being better than our opponents. And it wasn’t only Arturo and Agus; there were other matches during the season too,” he said.

His focus now is on returning to his best: “I want to focus on getting back to the best game possible; the results will follow from that. Our intention with Jorge was to give him as much happiness as possible in this final year. That’s what we’ll try to do: find our best game and hopefully have the points fall our way.” Galán acknowledged that his chances of reaching the summit had become more complicated, while saying they would try to improve their game and keep those chances alive.