It’s started! Welcome to the Red Bull X-Alps 2011
‘Mine is actually 8.5…’ Tom de Dorlodot shaves 1500g off his kit at the start of the Red Bull X-Alps 2011
Monday 18 July 10:30
The Red Bull X-Alps 2011 kicked off on Sunday 17 July in warm sunshine with the athletes hiking up from Salzburg to the summit of the Gaisberg mountain and the first turnpoint from where they were able to launch and fly down.
Conditions however were stable and the flying tricky as the athletes pushed southeast into strengthening southerly winds.
Red Bull X-Alps 2011 - Go! Go! Go! The race begins... Photo: Red Bull
Toma Coconea (ROM) appeared to be almost lost at times when he took a curving line eastwards that most definitely cost him time and position.
Meanwhile Chrigel Maurer (SUI1), in a well-rehearsed manoeuvre that has become the hallmark of the current Red Bull X-Alps champion’s team, climbed straight up a mountain face no one else had spotted.
Chrigel’s fellow countryman Martin Muller (SUI3), who came so close to winning the event in 2007, made a tactical error that dropped him right back.
Pilots are now streaming around the second turnpoint at the Dachstein mountain, the start point for the first few Red Bull X-Alps races.
Kaoru Ogisawa (JPN1), one of Gin Gliders’ factory test pilots, is holding on to a slim lead ahead of Austrian’s Christian Amon (AUT2) and Paul Guschlbauer (AUT4).
However, only 18km separate the top 20 athletes. That’s how close it is at this stage!
We’re already seeing a split in tactics here though with Kaoru Ogisawa heading straight west along a valley whilst others are heading further south to join the continuous east-west running valley system that will lead them towards the third turnpoint at Austria’s Grossglockner.
However, the Grossglockner is at 3,798m and with the forecast for the next week is changeable to say the least. We saw one forecast that promised rain, rain and more rain. But a few Google searches later we turned up a nicer one that forecast only ‘mostly cloudy’ for tomorrow.
Either way, there’s no great flying conditions on the horizon, but there’s certainly a lot of walking!
Weather prediction is everything in the Red Bull X-Alps as Honza Rejmanek explained in his regular column in the latest issue of Cross Country magazine.
If this new forecast is right then tomorrow we should see some flying taking place and the field starting to spread out a bit, if not, and the first forecast comes true, that this race could turn into a ground war and a muddy one at that!
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