Czech Republic to Host AR European Championships

Jan Smolik / 10.05.2011

The Czech Adventure Race has been selected as the AR European Championships for 2011. After Poland, Slovenia and Sweden, The Czech Republic will be fourth country to host it. Teams will have a special motivation to compete. Apart from the title, honors, cups and fame, the winning team gets a free entry to the World Champs in Tasmania. The race takes place between August 16 and 21.
The AR European Series (AREuroSeries for short) joins adventure races from throughout Europe. It exists to promote adventure racing and international competition. Teams receive points for participating in individual races and who collects the most is the winner. Furthermore, one race is selected every year to be European Championships.
“It is a great opportunity and also a great commitment for us,” says race director Tomas Vanek. “We want the race to be hard and challenging for the top teams, but we also want the slower teams to enjoy the race. They need to be able to cross the finish line even if they have to take short-cuts. There needs to be balance between these two things.”
“We are competitors ourselves and we always wanted to build a race we would want to compete in,” explains course designer Petr Bloudek. “Competitors want challenging and varied courses where they do not get bored. They want correctly located checkpoints. They do not need hotels and air conditioned TA’s. This race will be more about racing and less about sponsors.”
The Czech Adventure Race 2011 will be located in the Valley of Sázava River, where beautiful scenery opens opportunities for a challenging yet interesting course.
“We want the race to be an advertisement for adventure racing. We take a commitment that everyone will be able to follow the race on the internet through CP results, comments, photos, videos and reports. We want to show that even low budget race can have great and comprehensible reporting,” promises race webmaster Jan Smolik.

For full details of the race see <a href="#" onClick="javascript:newsitewindow('http://www.adventurerace.cz')" class="main">www.adventurerace.cz</a>.