At the end of August 2020 beautiful Slovakia hosted one of the worldwide famous short but very challenging relay races: Red Bull 400 in Štrbské Pleso. The course length is just 400 meters (only 100 meters for each team member), but this relay race is undoubtedly very far from a regular 4x100 m relay that you could see in the Olympic Games. The reason is simple: you have to run towards the top of a ski jump enjoying a pure uphill sprint.
There were 17 men's teams and 28 mixed teams to participate in this year's event. All the teams managed to complete the full distance in less than 7 minutes, whereas the fastest mixed team Skupina showed an impressive result of 2 min 47 sec and the fastest men's stopwatch showed 2 min 9 sec. We asked one of the dream teams (whose name is Dream Team :) ) to share their thoughts about this unique experience and happy to let you feel the atmosphere of this authentic event.
Dušan Sláma (Instagram: dusko.slama)
We are Slovak orienteering runners. We decided to compete as a team, because a person oneself could feel lonely, that's why you need a team spirit!
It was our first experience with such a "short" competition, but we had a clear plan - to win.
Unfortunately, the team of Austrian boys was faster about only one (!) meter on the finish line.
We didn't enjoy the full program because it was too long, but all the speaker's comments were clear and funny, all participants were happy and did their best on the track, visitors cheered to everyone.
All runners were well supported by refreshments - drinks and baguettes. Kiosks offered a wide variety of sports clothes and equipment.
We thank Dušan and his superb Dream Team for the comments and wish them to win a well-deserved first place prize very soon! We are sure that with their outstanding result of 2 min 12 sec it's just a matter of time.
