70.3 IRONMAN® World championships Zell am See: a short photo story from an exciting stay

This post is first of all for those who have not had the chance to go to Zell am See. Zell is a little town in the midst of the Austrian Alps close by to the famous city of Salzburg. Zell was picked for the world championships as the first place in the history of IRONMAN® not located on US soil.

Patricia and I have been driving there on Thursday before the race from Vienna. The freeways were extremely busy, so we were not spared several traffic jams, 5 hours drive until arrival. Relieved to be there we found Zell completely congested, traffic had more or less come to a standstill. Imagine two 70.3 IRONMAN races taking place on one weekend with 2500 participants each, plus family members and friends, and on top of all these people the holidaymakers in the area.

Patience had to become our first motto. The next one: get rid of the car.

So we did, rented a bike, collected the permits necessary for such a race and escaped the town to drive up the mountain to our accommodation located highly above all turbulences of Zell, an incredible beautiful farmhouse with all sort of animals as old as dating back to the mid 16th century, so tasteful, so quiet, so friendly the people, so excellent the food.

Exploring the area

First job for us was to go out on the course to find out about how to get where in which time. It was good to have the race on Saturday as a kind of rehearsal before the big day on Sunday. Moreover, it gave us the opportunity to collect some footage already. It was really difficult to find good spots where you could catch our boys, Sebastian Kienle and Andi Boecherer, on the bike. These boys are so damn fast.

Meeting people

Beside inhaling the course to be ready for the shooting on race day, world championships are always the place to meet lots of people. So the meet and greet also ate up lots of our time.

The hectic on race day

We went to the transition area to say good luck to Sebi and Andi, shot some pictures there and then went out on the bike course. No chance to watch the swim start. We would have been far to slowly to catch the guys on the bike. They passed on  the bike, we rushed to the run, they passed us on the run, we rushed to the finish line. Squeezed in like sardines embedded into unbearable noise we waited for the boys. I got them. We’ll see how… despite the good results – Sebi’s run on to 2nd place was tremendous and Andi, 6th place in the end and in front on the bike for so long was breath-taking – I was left behind in somehow frustrated.

Probably due to exhaustion and the uneasy feeling not knowing whether my footage will turn out to be good enough … Fritz is working on that and we’ll see. He is a magic cutter, so he is going to make something out of my film fragments.