After several years in Val Sesia the 2009 edition of the TEVA Extrem Outdoorgames took place in the beautiful valley of Chiusella and the artificial whitewater stadium at Ivrea. The base camp for Thursday and Friday was in Fondo deep in the valley of Chiusella.
The first competition was the individual long distance race on the river Chiusella. The race course I found more difficult then it was in the past on the Egua. After all the scary stories the evening before and the damaged boat beside the river, I was glad when I reached the finish without any injuries or damages. In the afternoon the top 20 had to race on the upper upper Chiusella. With some big drops, slides and some nasty holes, the name "extreme race" really deserved to be called so. In some ways I was glad that I missed the top 20 and could take some pictures :-) 
On Thursday evening all the competitors got a delicious dinner with plenty of wine. It was quite an amusing evening. And even quiet paddlers started talking a lot... On Friday morning it was time for the team race on Chiusella. Because Swiss paddler Severin hit his head during the top 20 race on the upper upper Chiusella he suffered from a headache and couldn't start. As a replacement Josh Neilson from New Zealand joined the Swiss team. Keen Van Kuipers joined the Swiss team as well. Instead of three paddlers we were four. The event judges agreed as far as we not be considered in the final results. So we startded as a three nation team and came down quite well. If they would have included us in the results we would have been in the fourth place out of eleven teams. Team New Zealand won in front of team France, followed by the team Slovenia.
Saturday the competition took place in the artificial whitewater stadium at Ivrea. First I thought it's wrong to make an "extreme" competition in a man made river. After my first training runs I had to change my mind. The race course was much harder than I thought. There were quite big holes and some pushy eddies. During the slalom I tried to race safe and I came through without touching ore missing a gate. This brought me to ranking 20. Unfortunately Severin touched a gate that costs him 50 seconds extra. Much better it worked out for Lukas Wielatt. He raced very well and reached position 10. The winner was Dejan Kral from Slovenia in front of Mike Dawson (NZ).
The sprint race was in the afternoon. Every competitor had to race twice. This made it quite hard. I raced okay but went twice to early into the eddy and lost some seconds. In my opinion they shoud use light barriers instead of common stop watches. This would help to make some results more reliable.
On Saturday evening the team slalom race started. Again three paddler from one nation had to start together and had to pass some down und uppstream gates. Every team worked out his own strategy. So did the Swiss team. Our plan was to keep a gap of some meters between paddler 2 and paddler 3. Unfortunately this didn't work out well. So we crashed into each other and finally missed some gates. Fortunately other nations had similar problems. Again we were on place 4 if they had ranked us.
The last race was the Boater-X on Sunday morning at 10 o'clock. I had to race against Michele Ramazza (Italy), Daniel Herig (Austria) and Steven Van Den Heuvel (Belgium). Some strong and fast paddlers. Therefore I was really suprised when I realised that I was leading the race. I defended my postion until the end of the race where I made a big mistake and missed the eddy with the checkered flag which I had to touch. Even if I didn't win this heat, it showed me, that I'm able to keep up with some fast guys.
Finally the winner of the Boater-X was Jakobus Stengelein (Germany). He raced very well and deserves the titel of the Boater-X champ.In the overall results the winner was Dejan Kral from Slovenia in front uf Kiwi paddler Mike Dawson. Severin Haeberling reached place 23. just in front of me, followed by Lukas Wielatt.
In my opinion the TEVA Extreme Outdoorgames 2009 was a really good event and the new location brought some freshness with it. Thanks to the whole organizer team for this great event.
Check out: http://www.tevaextremeoutdoorgames.it/
