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24 hours on skis

markus — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:24:00 +0000

the last weekend i’ve been to the Kronplatz ski resort in italy – as usual – not for holidays.. the local skiing schools had prepared for an extraordinary event – trying to challenge some world records, namely “the most vertical feet skied downhill in 24 hours” – for single athletes and a team of four.

starting with four teams of four (only one per team was allowed on the piste at any time) their modest goal was to make 1 million metres in height altogether – and they did so.. in only about 14 hours.

all athletes have been very well prepared, and everything around quite obviously was at least as well organized with a lot of helpers around all the time. and all the effort was thanked with perfect weather-conditions which probably helped a lot to even make a girl of 20 shatter the old record for a single athlete (which has been ~92k metres, set by a male of course)

with the help of bernd i covered this event for their homepage and PR, which was a lot harder than expected, as getting close to the action wasn’t that easy – as nobody wanted to risk an accident at speeds of 100km/h, and the only turn they had to do at the end of each lap of course got a bit boring soon ;)

despite the lack of time for such experiments i’ve put the gopro on one of the skier’s helmet once, but never having done this with skiing before the setup has been quite a bit too low for the racing action (well, usually there’es a front wheel to get into the frame ;)), but it probably still shows the athletes perspective quite well – keep in mind they did all this ~200 times.. ..

it’s been a pleasure to witness and document the success of such a motivated crowd – and i seriously doubt that their records will be broken anytime soon.

kraftwerktrophy 08

markus — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:35:07 +0000

the sequel of a legend.. after skipping one year due to organizational troubles a legendary 24h-roadbike-race, the “kraftwerktrophy” was reborn, relocated away from the name-giving powerplant of theiss to donnerskirchen.. a small, still great race, with an even greater spirit, let’s hope there’ll be some more participants the next time..

as always with 24h-races, i did a lot of testing which mostly takes more time – one doesn’t have at “normal” races – but also results in a lot similar photos, so not too much variation in there.. been there from before dusk till after dawn, where the earlier was nice, but the latter quite boring and colorless..

another 24 hours on mountainbikes.. just..

markus — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 23:53:36 +0000

this time it’s been a bit different.. the track was a little shorter than usual, to be exact just around 850 meters, in return it got quite some turns (mostly 180s even), and well.. it’s been indoors.. it’s said to have been a world premiere – well quite likely there weren’t many people before having such a crazy idea.. 8) around 160 participants (as usual most in teams), were fighting for every meter on what proved to be a more selective track in the exhibition hall of freistadt (upper austria), than many have thought at first.. and it seemed that even the more sceptic starters found that it was fun and something different in the end..

it’s also been a first for us – sportograf.com – as it’s been the first 24h-race covered by one single photographer alone, namely me.. :) it really wasn’t easy, as it was a lot different than outdoors races, teams not changing as often and the track being that short, but i think i managed to provide our usual standards.. and of course there was a lot to learn again..

24 hours mtb

markus — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 23:03:55 +0000

sitting on a mountainbike for 24 hours must be fun. so why not doing it – bunch of friends of mine thought – and one of them registered a team of four for the euro-championships.. being their substitute i was lucky enough that all of the four were fit for the race, as i trained a little too little the last weeks before the race..

so i was mainly there to help the team and shoot photos, and as i had a 30d at hand i thought that would be a nice possibility to give it a test-drive – which i did.. i shot a lot of trash which i already put where it belongs, and of course many pics of our team, but the less “personal” ones i put up in this gallery..

[edit: it was there where i met the sportograf-guys first, so i thought i should add this, for historical reasons :)]