Romanian Extreme Adventure 2009

7 Day Race

 

A country with mountains is a country with off road cars. And where there’s off road cars, sooner or later there’s bound to be the desire to compete and see who’s the best driver, the most skilled mechanic or the most cunning navigator of them all. This year’s edition of the Romanian Extreme Adventure gave riders, drivers and navigators the chance to show what they're made of as well as presenting the opportunity to push themselves to their limits and over.

There in the Eastern part of the country, where the Carpathian Mountains bend westward, the 7 day competition gathered at its starting line more than 150 competitors in eight classes: Auto, ATV, Quad and Moto – all of them coming in either Extreme or Open difficulty choices. Much like every year, the track was a brand new one – rediscovering old roads and letting extreme classes find their way through the wilderness of the 1500 meters alpine forests on unknown tracks. The total track of the race measured a little over 1680 km and was supposed to be resolved by following the roadbooks – for Auto Extreme and Open classes – but also keeping to a preloaded GPS track for ATV, Quad and Moto classes.

Being a stage of the National Off Road Championship, some of the best national teams lined up their chosen vehicles – names such as Gabi Nicolae (first Romanian to enter a car in the infamous Dakar competition), Emanuel Gyenes (three times Romanian Extreme Adventure Winner, Silver Medal in the International Six Days Enduro) as well as Romeo Duicu (managed to finish the Dakar in the present South America alternative)

The first competition day saw everyone working their way through a particularly difficult special stage. Unlike the previous year, the special stage, named prologue, had it’s own reserved day – the results of which will decide the starting order of the next race day. This particular plan fell through due to rain, which turned the prologue from difficult to impossible.

The first day of actual racing was compared, by many, to one of a rally raid competition – spanning over 142 kilometers - took the eight classes to the camping based far away from civilization, in the heart of the mountains. This first and longest day gave the racers the first difficult challenge - a big river crossing. Due to heavy rains, the moto and atv classes have been redirected to the bridge but auto classes had to face the treacherous waters. Few expected the outcome of this day – in Open Auto class, half of the competitors abandoned as well as a third on Moto Open. Auto Extreme class only saw one team abandon due to the river stage.

Day number two, which took place in extremely heavy rain sported a good deal of challenges for all the classes, pushing a good deal of competitors to abandon. At day’s end, after the long, wet and exhausting track, the only thing that stood between the competitors and the finish line was a special stage where half of Auto Extreme class failed to start due to weather conditions which in the third day dampened. To everyone’s delight, rain in the third day had it’s debut quite late hence the rate of daily abandonment was fairly low. Regardless of this, the day reserved a difficult track, with special stages on the side. This particular day seemed to emphasize the difficulty through one particular system failing: winch and winch rope. The overall damage that this day produced, as well as the competitor’s fatigue levels urged the organization team to declare day three one for resting and car repairs.

Repaired and replenished, everyone set off on the forth day’s track. Crowded clouds and low temperatures threatened this stage as well but the engines roared fearlessly at the starting line. It proved to be the most challenging of all days, up until then anyway – with only less then a quarter of the cars in Auto Extreme class managing to finish the stage. In Auto Open class, defending his leader position, a team with a 16-year old pilot dominated the charts and was on it’s way to a smashing victory.

Finally, the last morning of the race had come to pass. It was a short day for all the classes, so that they would all arrive on time for the award ceremony. Of course, rain played it’s part in this, as always, making the Open class special stage particularly difficult and was also a little bump in the Extreme class’ road.

 

The evening’s award ceremony saw extenuated but happy competitors, gathering what remained of their energy to walk up to the podium and receive their prizes. Finishing the race was, as many admitted, one of the most difficult things they ever had to do. At least until next year, anyway.