Thursday, April 1, 2010

Not Quite in the Spirit

I have never done an IM in Europe. Actually never done any sort of triathlon in Europe. Much too cold for the likes of me but never say never I guess. Anyway, I have heard lots of stories about how phenomenal the support is for races throughout Europe, in particular Germany. The European Championship IM race held in Frankfurt, Germany will be held on July 4th 2010 this year. That is the longest day in the Calender. Now there are a few factors affecting this years race that will see the longest bike leg ever at 185k due to road construction.
To allow for this 'extension' the cut off time for the bike has been rightly so adjusted giving athletes an extra 15minutes ride time. But once you get off the bike it literally is a race against time as this year IM Frankfurt will be the SHORTEST race (according to time) EVER.
So just when I was praising the support of the general public, it seems that the local residents have kicked up such a fuss about the crowd noise and support that carries on well into the night that the run time has been rather shockingly reduced.
YES you heard right. And not by a mere 30minutes. In the past the race has finished at 11pm. And because of some grumpy residents who cannot simply accept and embrace the fact that for one day a year their home town holds one of the most celebrated endurance races in the world, the race will now officially finish at 10pm!
Apparently between the hours of 10 and 11pm last year only 120 athletes went through the finish. SO WHAT? If you have to wait 1hour for 1 person - you do it! That is the spirit of IM. A spirit that it seems is seriously lacking amongst the grumpy 'you make too much noise' folks who want to be in bed with a hot cocoa rather than line the street and witness one of the reasons to be at a finishing line in last place :)
Bah HUMBUG!
If you would like to read the full story check out:
http://www.slowtwitch.com/News/The_longest_day_of_the_year_1276.html

2 comments:

Jocelyn Wong Neill said...

I heard from Tereza that only fast people race in Frankfurt anyway...like a ton of 9-10 hour finishers, and basically if you're slow you pretty much don't bother going! got kind of a bad vibe about the race from various sources... it's also male dominated, like 90%?!

Emma said...

As I said...Bah HUMBUG!