FollowWe’ve seen, and taken part in plenty of crazy sporting events here over the years. We played football on Salzegg under the Eiger north face, snow bike racing, you can even have a game of golf on the Lauberhorn in summer if you fancy it. And of course there’s the pool race at the end of the season. None of these even approaches today’s event however. You might remember that back in January we had a world cup ski race here. The course is 4.4 kilometres long, and it has a vertical drop of just over 1000 metres. It goes from the top of the Lauberhorn down to Innerwengen just below the village. Today’s challenge is to complete the course in reverse. That’s right, you start at the bottom and race to the top. It’s called the Vertical Up.
There are no rules concerning how you might accomplish this, as long as you don’t use anything motorised. Skis are ok for example.
Fancy dress is encouraged.
Here’s Georg from Central Sport. You might remember him piloting the Space Shuttle in the pool race last year.
Lining up for the start.
And off they go.
The first 50 metres is a gentle meadow. This doesn’t last long. The Zeilschuss comes next.
The winner will take 30 or 40 minutes to complete the course apparently. To put that into context, if you were to go to the finish from here using the train and a couple of lifts, it would take you just as long as the winner will do it on foot.