Chal­leng­ing weath­er sit­u­a­tion - an inge­nious coup

In unsta­ble weath­er con­di­tions, the com­pe­ti­tion start­ed as planned at 10:10 a.m. in Egg. The 12-kilo­me­ter long moun­tain run over mead­ows and rocks to the 1686 meter high Nieder, fol­lowed by a sprint from the paraglid­er to the start­ing area. The fog still hung deep around the Niedere, but about ten min­utes before the first moun­tain run­ners reached the fin­ish, a short weath­er win­dow opened, which allowed the planes to take off. After 30 min­utes, the rest of the paraglid­ers were released by mass start, although not all moun­tain run­ners had reached the fin­ish line yet. So, every­one was in the air. The times were then added up. In ret­ro­spect, it was con­sid­ered a bril­liant coup, as the ath­letes con­form to the orga­niz­er.

Top per­for­mance on land, in the water, and in the air

The extreme sports­men cov­ered the 1100 meters in alti­tude, with their paraglid­er part­ly in a nose­dive, and reached the fish pond in Andels­buch with a tar­get­ed land­ing. If the land­ing was incor­rect, extra laps had to be run before the kayak­er ran to the 4.7-meter high tip­ping start at the VKW pow­er sta­tion in Andels­buch. The six-kilo­me­ter-long, stren­u­ous white water course led over an uphill pas­sage, a slalom and a two-meter-high water­fall.

Deci­sion on the last kilo­me­ters

The fourth and last stage final­ly led with the moun­tain bike, 31.2 kilo­me­ters over the steep ter­rain of the for­mer route of the Wälder­bähn­les with a fin­ish at the HIGH 5 Cen­ter. The high­est point of the moun­tain bike route is the extreme­ly steep, car­ry­ing pas­sage at Hochhäderich, fol­lowed by a spec­tac­u­lar down­hill sec­tion. The spec­ta­tors eager­ly await­ed the first fin­ish­ers around 2 p.m., who were among the best in the world. After 60 kilo­me­ters on water, on land and in the air, only three min­utes was about to decide the places 1 to 3. Until short­ly before the fin­ish of the bik­ers, it was not sure whether the team Pro­tos Inte­gral could also main­tain its lead on the moun­tain bike course. The fans final­ly greet­ed Andreas See­wald fre­net­i­cal­ly, close­ly fol­lowed by the Czech Jan Jobanek in sec­ond place. Local hero Elias Hagspiel from Hit­ti­sau deliv­ered a top per­for­mance with the sec­ond best time and put his team on the podi­um. The inter­na­tion­al teams Pro­tos Inte­gral won ahead of ASS Brno Extreme e-finance from Tschechien and Skin­fit Rac­ing in third place.

Incred­i­ble per­for­mance

Spe­cial respect to the two excep­tion­al ath­letes, Johannes Nis­ter and Robert Moos­mann, who com­plet­ed all four dis­ci­plines on their own. The fastest women in the field of extreme ath­letes were women of the Czech out­door extréme team. The per­for­mances of the local heroes, Johan­na Raid, Christi­na Feuer­stein, Anngritt Scheuter and Jas­min Meus­burg­er, were also great. Con­cern­ing this year's com­pe­ti­tion, out­door tro­phy com­pe­ti­tion direc­tor, Chris Alge, said: "With the weath­er sit­u­a­tion this year, it was a real­ly hard piece of work with many deci­sions. I am hap­py togeth­er with the inter­na­tion­al stars and the var­i­ous ama­teurs."

We would also like to thank the Vorarl­berg­er Kraftwerke for their excel­lent coop­er­a­tion with the orga­niz­er.

Ath­letes and fans alike cel­e­brat­ed the equal­ly leg­endary "out­door night" with "The Rub­ber­neck­ers" and "Vin­tage Com­pa­ny" on the grounds of the old Lin­ge­nau rail­way sta­tion until the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing.