Red Bull X-Alps 2017: the great adventure begins

The 8th Red Bull X-Alps is about to begin. The 31 athletes selected for this amazing adventure race will start at 11:30 sharp today, Sunday, 2 July, from the center of Salzburg. The first out of the starting blocks will be Italy’s Aaron Durogati and Germany’s Sebastian Huber who won the special Leatherman Prologue last Thursday. They will then be followed by all the others, staggered according to their Prologue times. And they will also be joined by 4 times competition winner Christian Maurer from Switzerland, who did not compete in the Prologue due to health problems. This is why the Swiss Champion will start with a delay of 2:31:21.

The X-Alps 2017 competitors will now make their way across the the Alps, across 1138 km either by paragliding or on foot. The competition starts as mentioned in Salzburg and finishes on a small raft in the sea off Monte Carlo. The traverse includes 7 obligatory Turnpoints, the first of which, immediately after the start, is Gaisberg, the 1287m above Salzburg. From here the course continues towards Triglav, the symbol of Slovenia which, for the first time ever, is included in the race course. Current weather conditions are poor, meaning that today and tomorrow they will not be able to fly and the battle will evolve on the ground, as much as possible by... running.

Here's a short video (by Matteo Mocellin / Storyteller-Labs) of Aaron Durogati, the two-times paragliding world champion who will now take part in his third Red Bull X-Alps. What is certain is that today, and for the next 8-10 days (Maurer won in 2015 in 8 days, 4 hours and 37 minutes) the commitment, passion and battle of all athletes will be extreme!



>> See the Red Bull X-Alps 2017 Live Tracking

Info: www.redbullxalps.com