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The World Championships, Samorin 2017, Slovakia

Challenge Samorin, Slovakia 2017 – an afterword

The title »world championships« sounds spectacular. Well, it was and it was not in the same time.
For those who have no clue what the heck I am talking about, here some words of clarification. A few weeks ago the Challenge Family company organized a triathlon middle distance race as a counterpart to the 70.3 IRONMAN world championships, this year in Chattanooga.
The starter field was worthwhile the name, nobody missing from Brownlee to Sanders to Kienle and many more well known names for fans of this sport. Under cover, I only found out later when I was back home again, Sheikh Nasser, founder of Team Bahrain, was among the competitors.
For passerby and locals a different picture may have evolved.

Samorin is a small town in Slovakia, around 30k Southeast from Bratislava, its capital, from Vienna not even 100k. So I spontaneously decided to grab my camera and go there, no idea what to expect, not prepared, no scope of the course, but not caring either.
Traveling East is traveling East, it feels different. Arriving in this little town proved all preconceptions to be right. A sleepy place, the inhabitants were drifting through the Saturday morning not paying attention to what was going in their home town. Everything was quiet, the barriers were not in place yet, the cars followed their weekend routines. Some volunteers with Challenge t-shirts tried to create a kind of excitement for themselves. Maybe they were afraid falling asleep while waiting.
I grabbed the camera and took the perspective of an outsider. The VIP area which was mainly were you felt that there was an event taking place, appeared to be the center of it all, a place exclusively made for people with wrist bands and tags around their necks, big mercedes and BMW cars etc. barred for the normal people, a strip along the Danube where some rich guys have invested a lot to keep the public away from the shorelines of river Danube. Huge halls for riding and magnificent open-air race tracks.
In between all this fancy pomp triathletes were struggling through the heat, lonely, left to their own devices during most parts of the race.

I have to admit I was bored by the occasionally passing by competitors. Results? What do results matter nowadays, there shelve life is short as races mushroom all over the globe. Fans are informed anyway and others are not interested, right?

Enjoy the video clip of a different kind and please, don’t expect a race video with heroes posing.

Susann

Susann

Susann is the biest prototype and head of the team. She is Austrian, has studied medicine, meaning she is a medical doctor and the Biesters' alpha wolf. Susann continuously produces new ideas, is strong in making concepts and is practically always ON FIRE. Without her BIESTMILCH wouldn't be where and what it is today, and anyway - not possible.

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