Kong Vinter

“Gimme Shelter�

Anne-Marie Dunhill / 20.01.2015

Arguably one of the primary unwritten rules of adventure racing is that anything can happen. At the Kong Vinter race in Denmark last weekend this rule played out in full glory as the Masters race had to be shortened by three stages as the winter storm Egon barreled across the country.

During the second stage, mountain biking orienteering, “Pedal Damn It”, (very aptly named) teams struggled to pedal their bikes in the strong winds. Several times they were forced to push their bikes as it was impossible to pedal: imagine that, a “hike a bike” on terrain as flat as a pancake!  It was quite a difficult 20kms.

Race director Sanne Hansen was on site at transition 3 to implement her plan “B” for the climbing stage. Plan “A” had been to have the teams use a crane drivers training center for the rope works and there were three cranes on site in Audebo. The high winds made that impossible and teams were sent directly to the kayaks after transitioning from their mountain bikes in a metal shelter. Hot sausages were grilled on a barbeque sheltered in a metal shipping container.

Veteran Finnish adventure racer Petri Forsman was racing in the mixed category along with teammate Henrika Malstrom. This was Petri’s third year racing the Kong Vinter and he had added incentive to do well in 2015 as he had yet to finish the race. The first year it was due to a mountain bike breaking and the second year his teammate withdrew because she was simply too cold to continue.  Their team, Multisport.fi had been steadily climbing in the ranking, passing several all male teams.

Prior to the race Henrika had said that she was nervous as this was to be her first long race since the birth of her son a year ago. She comes from a triathlete background and when Sanne was describing the teams in the car on the way to the race start, she summed Henrika up saying, “She’s a badass, one tough lady!” Coming into transition 2, when Leah, the race volunteer marshaling asked how they were doing, Henrika just said through clenched teeth, “Cold, very cold.” After changing in the unheated shelter they transitioned quickly to the kayaks; Henrika was in the water first and quickly took off down the Svinninge canal that served as the 15km kayak section. The effects of the wind and rain were clearly visible as several racers hands shook so badly that they had a hard time attaching their kayak skirts.

It was during this kayak section that team Multisport.fi had to withdraw from the race. Unfortunately Henrika’s kayak tipped and she was soaked. She managed to paddle back to the transition area but she later said that she couldn’t feel a single part of her body. Leah, the marshal, made the wise call to stop the team for a half an hour to see if Henrika’s condition improved and when it didn’t they were transported back to race headquarters. At race headquarters she was wrapped in warm clothing and assigned a “minder” in the form of burly policeman named Torsten who kept a watchful eye on her and fetched her sugary tea and hot food. Her color improved considerably under his watchful eye.

The remaining teams continued to battle the elements, pushing hard to progress in the relentless wind. Behind the scenes the organizers were starting to go through several letters of the alphabet as plan “B” was dropped and several adjustments to the race route had to be put in place. All of the volunteers were spot-on and very reactive as they responded to a situation that was clearly growing more critical as darkness fell.

The media drove to Kongsøre Forest where, according to plan “A”, teams were meant to transition from their mountain bikes for a very technical orienteering section using 1:10 maps. At this point the wind was so strong that the sturdy Volkswagen we were travelling in was rocking when we stopped and tree branches littered the deserted roads.  One of the organizers who was in charge of the media, Søren, called back to race headquarters to report on the conditions and Sanne took the decision at this point to shorten the race (they must have been at plan “K” by this point!) Initially teams coming into transition were told to do the orienteering in the forest, but a short time later plan “L” was put into place and they were directed to ride directly to the finish line which was about 27km away. Plan “M” consisted of quickly finding maps that would direct teams to the most direct route back as a portion of the route was not on their set of maps.

Back at race headquarters the atmosphere was one of tense concentration. Sanne had said prior to the race that she felt like all of the adventure racers were like her children and she wanted to make sure that they all had a good time. Now that motherly instinct was in overdrive as she said, “I want them all home, now!” Teams that had already finished the race were  tucking in to the copious spread of hamburgers with all of the toppings provided by the excellent cooking team of Connie, Mathilde and Gro. They were summarily dispatched in their cars out on the course to pick up racers still on the course who had sought shelter in various locations.

All of the racers were gracious and understanding about the situation. Afterwards, Klaus Jessen of the team Aarhus Adventure said that it was “Nice not to have had to take the decision ourselves, but it was actually harder to bike straight to the finish line because at least when we stopped at the different checkpoints we had our hands free to eat.” Another racer at headquarters, who had asked if there was going to be a prize giving ceremony or not, added that he was “sorry for you organizers, it’s a drag to have something like this happen.” If the Danish adventure racing community had appeared to be like a large family up until this point, their reaction to the unexpected consecrated that impression.

Once all teams were accounted for, there was a huge sigh of relief and everyone hunkered down for the night in the race headquarters. There was more then enough food for everyone and because of the winter storm Egon several bridges were closed around the country which meant that teams who had originally planned to drive back after the race were forced to spend the night in situ as well.

The next day, after everyone had left and the tireless organizers were cleaning up the race head quarters to return it in pristine condition to its normal function as a school, Sanne’s mobile phone rang several times as racers called to tell her what a wonderful time they had had, in spite of everything…because of everything?

(Note: Because of the complexity of calculating the race results, they were just published last Friday.)

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