Nirvana Adventure Race (ARWS European Series)

The Nirvana Raid in Italy Launches the ARWS Europe Season

Rob Howard / 26.04.2022

The Nirvana Raid will take place in Northern Italy from May 6-8th, and will be the first AR World Series race in Italy, as well as the first ever ARWS Europe regional series race.  It’s a significant race for a country where adventure racing has been growing in popularity recently, and a chance for teams from around Europe to race in the mountain country around the famous Lake Como.

The area is a European tourist hotspot, thanks to its easy access from Milan, the lakeside scenery and panoramas from the surrounding hills, and those same attractions make the city of Lecco a perfect location for the Nirvana Raid. 

The city is on the south eastern shore of Lake Como and is surrounded by mountains, including Monte Resegone and the Grigna Regional Park.  The area has a wealth of hiking and bike trails, some famous climbing locations, and of course the lake is the jewel in a crown of peaks.

This will be the setting for the Nirvana Raid, which offers two courses of 150km for teams of 4 (the ARWS category) and 70km for pairs, with courses including trekking, biking, rope activities and paddling.   The long course is expected to take teams from 18-20 hours for the winners, and closes after 28 hours.

The race is organised by the Nirvana Verde group, an amateur sports association which has been organising outdoor sports races for over a decade now, including mountain marathons, sport climbing, orienteering and trail races.  They are based in Lecco, encourage youth participation in particular, and were started by a like-minded group of friends “who love nature, the mountains and above all the sports practiced in them”.   (The name comes in part from the famous climbing route ‘Alba del Nirvana’ which the friends were on when deciding to set up their organisation.) 

Nirvana Verde is part of FISO, the Italian Federation for Sport Orientation, and the President is Mario Ruggiero, who is the Race Director of the Nirvana Raid.  He was also RD for a shorter race last year, which was round 5 of the new Italian Adventure Race Circuit.

The race has attracted a strong international entry, as well some Italian teams looking to step up to longer distances and a bigger challenge.   In the 150km category, there are 12 teams racing, from Italy, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands, and there Dutch and Brazilian pairs in the shorter race.   

The strongest entries come from across the borders of Switzerland and France. There are two teams from the Powerbar Swiss Explorer squad, including some not long back from competing at Expedition Africa in Lesotho.   The strong French teams will be the race favourites as they’ll be racing in familiar pre-Alpine terrain, and include some world class competitors. 

Team FMR has won a World Series race before, while Team France ExpeNATURE are lead by Romuald Viale, who has won several with the Raid 400 Naturex team.  The big DSN-74 club have a team entered too, and there is a French military team and one from the Pyrenees.  Team CheckPoint Hunters from Holland were Eco-Challenge Fiji racers, and have raced in several European countries, and one of three Italian teams is led by Anna Clelia Ponteri, who was also in Fiji.   There is a Nirvana Raid team as well.

The race starts at 22.00 on Friday, May 6th and you can follow news of the team’s progress on the race social media pages.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NirvanaRaid
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nirvanaraid

Website: https://www.nirvanaraid.it