Short Wrap-up of 2006 part III…

…oh yes and there was the great invitational Wellerbrücke Sickline-Extreme-Race on the Ötztaler Ache in Austria last fall organised by Mastermind Big-O-Productions aka Olaf Obsommer and Bernhard Mauracher. Located on the famous class 5 section of the river named Wellerbrücke it was destined to show some awesome action and nasty carnage (actually the safety-issue was really prioritized and all tricky sections were secured with rescue persons. Therefore the race just produced two swimmers which didn´t suffer any harm!).

Well, if I wouldn’t have got of balance and rolled twice (shame on me) I could have had the chance to get some more fame but as it was, I got 13th, the Slalom Paddlers dominated the race and Klausi Suchanek took first place closely followed by his former German Slalom-Team colleagues Thilo Schmitt and Michael Herde. Anyway it was one of the coolest Extreme Races I’ve been to, with a great atmosphere, in one league with the famous TEVA Extrem Mountain Games in Val Sesia (Italy) and I’ll be back for sure this year to kick some Slalompaddler-Ass!
;-)

pictures by Simon Strohmeier

As we got the worst winter this year as far as I can remember we even got back there to the same riversection to shoot some photos for the university project of a friend. Well, I´ve never seen the river with so little water until then...

My first contact with snow while paddling (oh, except that one year I studied in Loughborough, UK):


Behind the big rock in the pool there was another rock in the landing zone and the tricky part was to get far enough left on the slide to avoid it. Which wasn´t easy as very little water went over the slide ;-)


Happy I made it without impact:


The last drop on the race course, normally with a big hole at the end. Here racing Stefan Haderer aka Maus:


Rehearsing the victory scene for this year ;-)

pictures by Simon Strohmeier