Czech Adventure Race 2013
Getting Ready for the Czech Adventure Race 10th Edition
Jan Smolik (Czech Adventure Race) / 20.08.2013
The Wenger Czech Adventure Race starts Wednesday in Kroměříž and this edition of 2013 will be tenth in a row. This makes the race one of the oldest in continuous existence.
The anniversary edition will hosted by Kroměříž. The city or rather its Bishop’s Palace and gardens are part of the UNESCO World Heritage list. Thanks to great hospitality of the city and its custodians, the competitors will be able to enter some of these spectacular cultural sites at the race start.
Sadly, the 2013 edition will be without Karel Skřivánek. Karel was a long term member of the Kompar Xstream team, who are very experienced internationally (Explore Sweden, AR Slovenia, ...) and he died this spring after being buried by an avalanche. This year’s race will be dedicated to him. There is also a memorial team made up of his former teammates. He will be missed.
The course is over 400 kilometres long. It will be in two very different areas. The first area are the plains around the Morava river where a long inline skating and the paddling stages are located. There are two of both. Paddling will be very interesting as teams will go down by the river, and paddle back by Baťa canal. (This canal was built in years 1935 - 1938 to transport brown coal.) The paddling stages are rather long, adding up to over 60 kilometres. There will also be two skating sections along the river, measuring together over 50 kilometres.
The second race area is the Chřiby mountains where the trekking and biking sections are mainly located. Competitors will cross it several times on the way to the flattish sections and back with over 100km of walking and 200km of biking.
As for favourites of the race, the Czech team Salomon-Suunto/Accom/OpavaNet is considered the strongest. They were twelfth on last years AR World Champs and they are strongest Czech team of recent years. Salomon-Suunto/Nutrend also has some very strong names, but it is not clear if they will be able to work together as a team. As for international teams there are five of them at the start list. Russian Red-Fox is very strong and experienced, Estonian ACE Adventure Team will probably also do well.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Czech-Adventure-Race/67448970481?fref=ts
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