24 hours on skis
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.
