Voss Ekstremsportveko

Ekstremsportveko or Extreme Sports Week is an international extreme sports and music festival held annually in the small town of Voss in Norway. For 7 days athletes from all over the world converge in the small mountain town to compete for dominance in their chosen sport. It is also a great chance to meet new friends from different disciplines and catch up with old ones.

Women’s raft slalom

The first race for me was the rafting race. This year it was a two part race, slalom first, then head to head. My team won the slalom by a decent margin then narrowly missed out on winning the head to head but as slalom was worth more points we took the overall victory.

Even the safety guys are having a good time

Rafter X final between team Germany and the Voss Rafting Senter (VRS) boys. Team VRS had won the slalom and it was a battle to the end in the raft cross.  It was a Le Mans running start and Germany got the start perfect. VRS was chasing them the whole way down the river all that was left was the last rapid. Germany went right and VRS went left they had 200 m left till the finish line and Germany got forced into some rocks allowing VRS to take the victory  good work boys!

Voss Rafting boys taking the lead

The groupies cheering on team Voss

Winners!!

This is my 3rd year at Extremsportveko and each veko I try to enter a new competition that I haven’t competed in before. This year my two new competitions were the Amazing Raft Race and the Brandseth Teams Race. and we came first good times

River boarding head to head

Our Amazing Raft Race team, I don’t know why Jordie is so sad about winning this competition!

The Amazing Raft Race is not such a serious race as the slalom and raft cross races. The teams have anywhere between 4 and 7 people of varying abilities, the only prerequisite being that you have rafted down the section once before. The race has a series of clues and challenges, you have to solve the clue to find the next challenge. This year the challenges included taking on the kids high ropes course to find our first clue, some throw bagging target practice, some river swimming, rafting a rapid on the bottom of the upside down raft, and jumping off a bridge, all accompanied by a blow up pool toy.

Finally finishing the race after stopping half way down when my friend got pinned in an undercut wall in the racecourse. We evacuated her no worries and she is much better now. Thanks to the veko team for getting her out safe and also thanks for giving me a second chance to race as I thought I was disqualified for quitting my race to help my friend.

After the individuals race on the Brandseth there is also a teams race. Normally the teams race is on a much longer section and includes some big slides and also a portage but this year due to low river levels we raced on a shorter racecourse. I raced in a team with two English girls Sandra and Jenny and we were the only all girls team in the competition. We came 10th overall which we were pretty happy with then at the prize giving we were surprised to be called up to receive 2nd place in the women’s category and a team that had two girls, Marianne and Katrina, and one guy Mathias, won first place in the Women’s category.

Results:

1st in Rafting Slalom and Rafter X

1st in Amazing Raft Race

1st in Women’s River Boarding

3rd in Brandseth Downhill

2nd in Women’s Teams Race (but first and last really because we were the only women’s team)