Red Bull Romaniacs – Race Day 1

Red Bull Romaniacs – Race Day 1 update
 
Officially the warm-up and “easy” day of the race and with perfect weather, the Race Day 1 was a joy ride for some but a tough challenge for most: “Homer`s downhill”, creek ascends, and monster-hill-climb finish already started wearing on the riders
 
Sibiu, Romania, July 17th, 2011 – Update from Day 1 of the Red Bull Romaniacs, the toughest Hard-Enduro rallye of the planet. This first day is traditionally the toughest one for the riders, the organizers however decided this year to open the race with a more “gentle” day – and started in time at 07.30am with an easygoing liaison from the hotel in downtown Sibiu to the off-road start. Even though it was slightly foggy, the weather also meant well for the riders and sent them on course without rain and with a slightly wet track from the thunderstorm during the prologue. Therefore it was no surprise that in the morning everyone was in riding mood, highly motivated and excited about the day ahead. As a result of the great conditions and motivation, the leading riders were extremely fast and almost undercut the minimal times between the checkpoints.
 
The most extreme was certainly Graham Jarvis, who claimed another leading position and came in with over 20 minutes before the next riders. They came in in the following order: Letti, Xavi Galindo, Chris Birch, Darryl Curtis, Melcior Faja, Ervin-Zsolt Kovacs, Paul Bolton. Today`s total distance offroad was 132 km,including liaisons 146 km – the maximum allowed riding time for this total was 09.30hrs; Graham Jarvis managed the race in just over 4hrs.
 
Hence, the riders where not too unhappy to finally arrive at the finish of Race Day 1 and gave the monster hill-climb just underneath it a good chance to kick them off their bike once more. Only about ten riders made it all the way up, theothers took the “chicken-lines”. One of them was the South African Darryl Curtis, who arrived quite happy and relaxed at the top and was still excited about the beautiful riding day.
 
While lots of men were still struggling in the woods, the female Romanian Hobby Team had arrived. Sorina Sandu and Andrea Goga took off their helmets and looked...just great! Quite unlike some of their male fellow riders, one might add.
 
Graham Jarvis: “I had a great day – but it was also a very tough day: it started fairly steady, and I had time to get used to my GPS again, but soon the riverbeds started and they really drew a lot of energy. But I was definitely enjoying it!”
 
Xavi Galindo: “I had a very nice race day with a few quite tough challenges, but navigation was a breeze as the track was marked almost as good as an Endurospecial test. My bike had to take a few beatings but it performed just perfectly.”
 
Results Race Day 1
www.redbullromaniacs.com/results/results-2011/
 
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