Red Bull Elements at Annecy

Tuesday 17 May, 2011

Multi-sport adventure race in Annecy on 21 May 2011

Mud, sweat and tears … classic Red Bull

Red Bull Elements, a one day multi-sport adventure race comes to Talloires near Annecy, France on Sunday 21 May 2011. The team relay race celebrates three elements – air, earth and water – through four sports.

Fifty teams will take part and the event has attracted top-name athletes in the sports of paragliding, trail running, rowing and mountain biking.

Amongst those representing paragliding are France’s Charles Cazaux, winner of the 2009 PWC Superfinal; Gin’s Eric Roussel and 2009 French acro champion Cyril Planton. One of the world’s best trail runners, Kilian Jornet, is trail running for team Font Romeu, the high altitude training centre in the Pyrenees.

The courses for each discipline have been designed to be a little different from the norm, and interesting both to do and to watch.

The paragliding race involves multiple take-offs and landings, the final one being on a pontoon in the lake.

Red Bull Elements 2011: route map for the paragliding section

The rowers have to run with their boats through the streets of Talloires, and the trail runners have to enter the realms of climbing with some of the landscape they have to cross being more vertical than horizontal and involving ropes and ladders. The mountain bikers will have to do a tour of the bike park as part of their run.

Events kick off at 9am in Talloires, with the rowers doing 14km in Talloires bay. They then hand over to the trail runners who have a 9km course with 1,900m of vetical ascent to tackle, and the paragliders take over from there. The final course, the mountain biking finishes with a steep descent into Talloires village for around 2-2.30pm.