Trophy Day

Trophy Day

Good Trophy competitors, almost by definition, need to be good team players. Drivers, co-drivers, mechanics and support teams cannot function as individualists and all need to work with the large and complex organising team for the event. In Trophy events competitors also need to work regularly with other competitors during various stages in order to maintain and improve their position on the leader board.

Sometimes this simply takes the form of one driver do a fellow driver a favour by winching them out of a difficult situation, or indeed merely acting as a winching point when none other is available. Sometimes it means raiding your precious store of spare parts to help someone continue after a breakdown. Sometimes it’s even offering a few words of wisdom to someone new to the event..Lasting friendships form between teams who are at the same time trying their utmost to beat other team and the spirit of cooperation lives side by side with the spirit of competition. This gives Trophy eventing its unique character.

Trophy Day, always held on a weekend day and in a fairly accessible place to allow visitors to get a feel of the real excitement of this kind of offroading, this year required competitiors to complete two difficult mini-stages in teams of five vehicles and, only when the team elements are completed, a third and final individual stage follows.

Imagine getting five vehicles across a river, two of which have to cross on logs winched into place by the rest of the team. Precision winching, delicate manoeuvring, bursts of raw speed and power, co-drivers leaping around like the prime athletes they are. Imagine seemingly impassable swamps successfully negotiated because of linked winch lines and snatch blocks. Imagine a Hungarian having to communicate urgently and efficiently with a Belgian or a Russian or an Englishman or a German – and hand signals and incoherent shouts are the only language they have in common. Imagine mud flying, the exquisite bellowing of a V8 engine with the pedal to the metal, the singing of winch lines and the oohs and aaahs of excited spectators.

Begin to imagine this and you begin to get a feel for Trophy Day at the Croatia Trophy.