Dear friends, The Organizer announces – NO MORE WAITING LISTS !
All further entries will be placed on  List.
We encourage you to keep on registering.
And if the interest is too big we can organize separate track.

Looking forward to see you in Croatia,

Croatia Trophy Organising Team

No More

fdh

No more no more, guess I’ve had enough

No more no more, time to pack it all up

No more no more, finally free of doubt

No more no more, time for stepping out

Gonna drink at the well of freedom ‘till I’m thirsty no more

No more no more, guess I served my time

No more no more, no more living half a life

No more no more, nothing holding me down

No more no more, time for stepping out.

Gonna drink at the well of freedom ‘till I’m thirsty no more

Running fast and standing still, had my fill of paying bills

First through the gate, stepping up to the plate, working long and working late

Double shifts and overtime, putting my body out on the line

Sacrificing my health ‘till I don’t recognise myself

No more no more, gonna break these chains

No more no more, gonna live my life again

No more no more, no more messing about

No more no more, time for stepping out

Gonna drink at the well of freedom ‘till I’m thirsty no more

Had enough of feeling bad, had enough of getting mad

Chase every deal, beg and borrow and steal, I’ve been spinning like a wheel

Been giving it all of my best, never getting myself any rest

Been living out on the edge and I’ve been messing with my head

No more no more, being somebody else

No more no more, trying to hide behind myself

No more no more, gonna shout it out loud

No more no more, time for stepping out

Gonna drink at the well of freedom ‘till I’m thirsty no more

Carl Reuter

asdfasdf

Carl is no longer with us,

no longer in our team.

No more his smile,

no more his guitar,

no more his voice on our video,

no more his blog on our website,

no more big old blues man.

Just a tear for a dear friend who we miss so much.

Dear Carl,

Blues’n'troubles have been hanging on your tail too hard and too long.

I don’t know where are you going but I’m sure that’s the only place to go.

Blues on,my friend,blues on…………….

safsadfsa

Igor & Croatia Trophy Organizing Team

Here’s a book you can enjoy every day for a year, with color photos of CroatiaTrophy 2010 offroad event.

Preview is onlly 29 pages. Book contain 118 pages and 280 photos. I hope you will like it!

Many congratulations to Jim and Wayne. It was only the first time they had worked together but they showcased a winning combination of professionalism, experience and talent. They also managed to demonstrate beyond doubt that a well-sorted but still relatively stock Td5 Defender, with only the usual high-street available mods, can be a competition winner in an extended event like this, an event which spans eight days of hard running in very challenging conditions. Reliability in such circumstances obviously becomes a key success factor and the Team Gigglepin Land Rover took it all on the chin without blinking. Indeed, Land Rovers acquitted themselves extremely well this year, several achieving high placings on the overall rankings, as the overall results table will show. All in all, a vintage year for the British entrants and for Land Rover. It was the first time the Trophy had such a large number of teams from Britain and they have spiced up the event wonderfully. Our thanks go out to them and to the large number of teams from far and wide – not just from all around Europe but from places as far away as Latvia, Israel and Malta. The sense of international camaraderie at this event is real and rewarding -  popular diplomacy at its best..

The final stage was designed for fast and technical manoeuvring and the top runners were covering the 50 or so kilometres of the stage in around a couple of hours. Others, as usual, found the skill levels required more of a challenge to live up to and were lucky to cover over 10 kms in an hour of hard work. In fairness, of course, the deterioration in piste conditions as each car passed through was significant. The battling stalwarts gritting their teeth at the tail end of the field found themselves coping with growing morasses created by the dozens of drivers who had passed through before them. Sections Jim Marsden had passed through at speed when leading at the front had now become winching exercises difficult enough to tax even the most experienced drivers. A competitor looking to end up in the top ten of this competition really wouldn’t want to drop too far down the order in the early stages.

But part of the charm of the Croatia Trophy is the fact that, given it is so notoriously tough, just finding yourself at the finish line is a considerable achievement. Watching the beaming pleasure derived by some of the tail-enders and adventure class participants just from completing a stage, for example, was a joy to behold. It must have been frustrating for those who were forced to drop out completely on the last day, and even more frustrating for the team who managed to roll their Jeep over upside down in the river only 50 metres from the finish line. Fortunately both driver and co-driver got out as they were quickly and completely submerged. The car was eventually winched upright by the organisers but, with a wide river and a steep bank in the way, there was absolutely no way to push the now completely flooded Jeep over the line.

For those whose focus is not on winning but on simply enjoying a testing challenge in a beautiful environment, surrounded by positivity, friendship and sportsmanship, all professionally organised to  the highest international standards, the Croatia Trophy is second to none. For those at the top end of the sport who come to compete for a place on the podium, success in this event confers upon them the highest accolades. A top ten place in this event is an exceptional achievement, respected throughout the international Trophy community. If you can score highly in this one, it is accepted you can be competitive anywhere.

As the final results still continue to trickle in and competitors, service support teams, press and spectators head back to camp to clean up and get ready for the prize giving ceremony and celebration meal this evening, this is your Croatia Trophy daily blogger signing off. I look forward to renewing this blog at the 2012 event.  Happy wheelin’ to you all…

Carl Reuter

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The stage began spectacularly for the extreme class with an immediate dowsing in the cold water of the river Glena, an upriver push in the bonnet-high current for about a hundred metres, before climbing up the bank again  and up onto the piste. The level of sympathy drivers had for their now stone cold engines as they accelerated away spoke volumes about their approach to this event. Some floored it and maxed out the revs as they went up through the gears on the subsequent flat stretch of gravel road. Others changed up early and showed mercy on their engines until they were warm again. It will be interesting to see which approach pays off by the end of the final stage tomorrow. The ’supercharged hares’ are certainly still dominating the overall rankings but a few ’strategic turbo-tortoises’ seem rapidly to be climbing the overall results table as previously faster performers above them drop out.

At the time of writing some stragglers are still coming in from the stage and results are not yet available, but today’s substantial and very testing stage of around seventy-five kilometres shou?d have begun to bring things to a head. Two years ago, for example, Jim Marsden found himself in an identical position to the one he finds himself in now on stage seven. A well-developed but technically relatively straightforward Defender Td5 (plus of course his excellent Gigglepin winches), outstanding driving and navigating, a record of being ultra-quick through the early stages and an approach to Trophy events which clearly believes that driving to the max all the time is actually the best way of nursing your car through the stages. Then, just at the point where it seemed that he was running away with it and victory was inevitable, bang, major drivetrain damage during the stage and an enforced repair back at camp. He drove spectacularly to try and make up the time, and was by far the fastest on the final stage. However, that one breakdown gave his opposition the one chance they needed and three of his rivals (including a ’strategic turbo-tortoise’, the admirable Boros Czaba in his VW Golf engined Jeep) just managed to overtake him on the overall rankings.

Jim’s well out front at the time of writing, having a blinder of a Trophy this year. Will he stay there? Will his relatively simple but incredibly resilient Land Rover just keep on taking this extreme punishment in its stride? Will his 24 volt-zapped 12 volt winches continue to live up to their reputation? Is it conceivable that he and Wayne might make a disastrous navigation error whilst blazing the trail – always a risk when you’re leading the field – and let his rivals catch up at the last minute? Will he perhaps unsuspectingly sink into a classic Croatian forest mega-bog and take ages to extract himself whilst others benefit from his predicament and slip by using a different line?

Not long now before we find out… the final day of the Croatia Trophy 2011 approaches and the tension builds.

Carl Reuter

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Stage six has been only 34 kilometres but must have felt like over a hundred to many of the teams and the retirements came thick and fast. Yes, it was our old friend the mud. Mud so thick it can easily absorb a full body punch from a V8. Mud so treacherous and slippery you can hardly stand upright in it and it could surely be used effectively for crowd control in a riot. Mud so deep it gave a particular advantage to those vehicles with top winches and left the co-drivers of others fishing blindly in sludge for their winch lines. (The mud can also be rather painful when drivers exit a swamp and gleefully spray press and spectators with cold, clammy, sticky, smacking great lumps of the stuff.)

On the other hand, immediately after the squalls of yesterday the temperature dropped significantly and today it has hovered around a pleasant 12 or 13 degrees – which has given relief to the hardworking teams as they laboured dutifully through the long succession of obstacles before them. It always amazes me that  some of them have the energy left for a few smiles and jokes with marshals and spectators when they stop at checkpoints or pause on the track to work out the best route for the latest challenge before them. Another characteristic of the Croatia Trophy can also sometimes be glimpsed from the sight of two competitors racing all out to beat each other to an obstacle, often jostling and even swapping paint, not to mention the occasional cross word, but then happily helping each other through it before baring their teeth and renewing their rivalry on the other side.

You begin to see why people come back year after year. This event may be tough. It may be taken very seriously by some who are here to win. It may be challenging and exhausting for all entrants, the great leveller where the little man can have a crack at the big boys. It may take a hard toll on people and machines. It may be quite far away from the Northern European offroad clubs (more than 20 teams this year from Belgium and the Netherlands, for example.) But it has one particularly defining characteristic: The Croatia Trophy generates fellowship.

Carl Reuter

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Stage five. Around fifty long, hard kilometres calling upon drivers to negotiate swamps, treacherous and slippery rises and descents, intricate forest tracks with complex navigation and some extremely technical winching exercises across steep camber with a river waiting to swallow up any errors. And, yes, there were a couple of rollovers and duckings today, neither of which – though dramatic to witness – resulted in more than minor damage to people or vehicles. Clever winching soon had them back on the piste and charging away to try and make up lost time. It was fascinating to see how different teams approached the winching challenges differently. Some were all for just a single winch line and balletic manoeuvring using momentum and wheelspin to position themselves perfectly for a clever exit from the obstacle. Others made full use of top winches or winch lines fed through high brackets on the roll cage. Yet others found themselves using front, back and/or top winches in cunning triangulation. One hugely creative competitor was seen to use front and back winches, both with snatch blocks. Spiderman would have been proud of him. And then – it is after all the Croatia Trophy – a couple of the leaders brilliantly memorably drove through obstacles involving balancing their vehicles against seemingly impossible cambers without using winches at all.

It’s not often one sees hard-bitten motor sports journalists put down their cameras and clap someone’s performance, but I witnessed that today.

There was also a final sting in the tail of the day. Early evening, people have just arrived back at base camp, tired and dirty. Mechanics are working on the cars, others just sitting in folding chairs with a cup of tea. There’s an air of tired normality about the camp, typical after a long and trying day. Suddenly a tremendous squall came in out of nowhere. This meant something like a hundred different tent-like structures in the camp decided they would prefer to be somewhere else. The day’s entertainment was therefore deliciously topped off with the sight of drivers, co-drivers, support team members and assorted camp followers desperately hanging on to the edges of hysterically flapping canvas whilst winch lines and strops hastily sourced from the vehicles were used to try and hold everything in place. This was a sight to behold and certainly a winching exercise with a difference.

Carl Reuter

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And everywhere you look, despite the seriousness and intensity of the work, you hear the laughter, the teasing, the jokes and the quick-fire banter between friends and rivals. The Croatia Trophy really is one of the most friendly events on the calendar.

Today has been Circuit Day – a closed 3km loop to be completed ten times. Waiting for them was a boggy swamp which became more liquid with every lap, jumps and sharp descents to rattle the teeth and test every joint and fastener of both man and machine, together with a few areas where the pedal could really hit the metal and these specialist machines could just let themselves fly. To make life even more interesting, competitors were required at some point in their laps to make a pit stop to remove one of their wheels, roll it around a fixed marker, replace it and carry on. The pit stop area somehow seemed to become especially crowded with jostling spectators every time one of the mega-jeeps or buggies with huge wheels came in – those wheels, effective as they undoubtedly are in swampy conditions, clearly need some serious effort to lift off and on and manoeuvre around.

Speed, deep bog and spraying lumps of sticky chocolate mud, the sweet sound of powerful engines at full tilt,  experienced drivers and co-drivers demonstrating the best of their skills, all under a dappled, sunny sky on a beautiful Croatian Spring Day. It’s that up-time in the Trophy, before the fatigue factor has really begun to set in and most of the competitors are still very much on an adrenaline high.

Carl Reuter

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But, yes, it is spectacular. The darker shadows flicker like strobe lights and columns of light rays ascend briefly through the trees. The cooler night temperatures cause the steam to billow from overworked engines and the flashes of colour from the small areas of paintwork still free of mud seem especially bright. Sounds echo and carry further and you can hear and see approaching competitors from far away. And then they arrive, they sweat and struggle to overcome the obstacles around them. Winches sing and clatter, urgent voices bluetooth each other and then they disappear again with a roar into two fading points of red light flickering in the forest.

Carl Reuter

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