EXTREME

I got an e-mail from Pete. It reported information from a recent Red Bull Dolomitenmann competition.

It is extreme.

event Red Bull Dolomitenmann
sport Multiple Sports
place Lienz
country Austria
date 08.09.2006
website event-page
description Rocking the Dolomites

Glorious sunshine and still 440 agonized faces. A picture suggesting
that the 19th Red Bull Dolomite Man contest was more extreme than ever.
More than 25,000 fans managed to get the very best out of the 110 teams
lined up for the event, driving the Red Bull Team – comprising mountain
runner Markus Kröll, paraglider Wendelin Ortner, kayak expert Harald
Hudetz and mountain biker Roland Stauder – to victory in Lienz on
Saturday.

Right at the start, the mountain run through the Lienz Dolomites, where
runners had to cover 12 kilometres and an altitude of 1700 metres,
demanded everything from the athletes. Team Fackelmann from the Czech
Republic were ahead over the varied terrain and the steep final section,
with Jiri Magal (CZE) beating Markus Kröll across the line. “Brutal! We
ran at breakneck speed,” gasped Austrian world-class mountain runner
Markus Kröll. Jiri Magal’s winning time was 1:23:06.

Every second, the runners handed over to the paragliders. After a
breakneck run towards the starting point, Pavel Stepan (CZE) was the
first to take to the skies, but was shown the way by Wendelin Ortner
(34:07.3 minutes/Team Red Bull). The 19-time Red Bull Dolomite Man
competitor swooped through the valley to Moosalm, leaving the
competition standing. “The flight was technically at the limit. The
2-kilometre run to the second take-off point was hell thanks to the 20
kg of equipment,” said an enthusiastic and exhausted Ortner, whose win
in the paragliding event gave his team the overall lead.

Whilst the paragliders began undoing the knots in their chutes, it was
the turn of the kayakers to feel the strain. To get to their kayaks,
they first had to swim across the River Drau. Seven-metre jumps and a
five-kilometre white-water race peppered with upstream stretches, Eskimo
rolls and 34 gates followed. The ride through the Drau was critical to
the outcome of the overall result of the competition. Harald Hudetz
(Team Red Bull) from Carinthia was ahead of the competition by an arm’s
length, thereby securing a clear victory in the kayak event with a time
of 28:09 minutes. “I’m totally finished, I gave everything I had,” said
Hudetz, expressing how he felt in a nutshell. His win gave mountain
biker Roland Stauder a head start of more than three minutes on the
14.8-kilometre mountain bike stretch (1400 metre ascent).

Stretches where the competitors were forced to carry their bikes and an
average downhill gradient of 26.4 percent didn’t put off Red Bull
mountain biker Roland Stauder. The South Tyrolean pushed himself to his
limits, managing to hold on to the overall lead to cross the finish line
– plagued by severe cramp – on the Lienzer Hauptplatz as the new Red
Bull Dolomite Man 2006. “This course is hard, really hard. You have to
be unbelievably careful and it only takes the slightest lapse in
concentration to lose all the ground that your teammates have made up,”
said Roland Stauder, who was only beaten by Italy’s Hannes Pallhuber
(01:27:40.8/Team Robotunits) on the mountain biking course. Posting an
overall time of 03:55:41.6, Kröll, Ortner, Hudetz and Stauder could be
certain of the cheers of thousands of spectators at the finish. Team
Robotunits finished second, 6 minutes and 26 seconds behind, followed by
Skoda Auto with an overall time of 04:07:27.7.

Final results of the 19th Red Bull Dolomite Man 2006

1. Red Bull – 03:55:41.6
Kröll Markus (AUT), 01:24:11.4
Ortner Wendelin (AUT), 00:34:07.3
Hudetz Harald (AUT), 00:28:09.5
Stauder Roland (ITA) , 01:29:13.4

2. Robotunits – 04:02:07.5
Frick Gerd (ITA), 01:29:54.1
Pranti Markus (ITA), 00:35:45.5
Schmid Gerhard (AUT), 00:28:47.1
Pallhuber Hannes (ITA), 01:27:40.8

3. Skoda Auto – 04:07:27.7
Skalsky Roman (CZE), 01:26:34.3
Skrabalek Jan (CZE), 00:36:32.7
Mruzek Kamil (CZE), 00:28:48.5
Bresser Carsten (GER), 01:35:32.2

The fastest of the individual competitions and winners of the Red Bull
Dolomite Man trophies by Jos Pirkner:

Mountain running: Jiri Magal (CZE)
Paragliding: Wendelin Ortner (AUT)
White-water kayaking: Harald Hudetz (AUT)
Mountain biking: Hannes Pallhuber (ITA)

If only one of the events was climbing. Or kiteboarding.