Here’s a coffee table book you can enjoy every day for a year, with color photos of CroatiaTrophy 2009 offroad event. As good as these shots may be (you decide), the book hardly does justice to the feeling of offroading on CT2009, but it’s a sampler for anyone who’s been there or may be planning to go.
Preview is onlly 29 pages. Book contain 108 pages and 250 photos. I hope you will like it!
But (always is one) people from Croatia must buy it from author, or in the book order (on Blurb site) you must give the delivery address from Slovenia or Italy.
THEY DO NOT DELIVER TO CROATIA!
This year we are finished 10′th event under the name -Croatia Trophy. That was the reason for a little photo exhibition of photos taken by Damir Pildek ( Fotic).
As always towards the final stages of the Croatia Trophy, the leaderboard is well stretched out. This doesn’t of course mean much. This event is so tough on cars and people you never know what’s going to happen until the last second of the competition. The favourites at the top are looking at each other out of the sides of their eyes like race horses ready for the off. I think I saw one or two of them even pawing at the ground and making peculiar neighing noises at breakfast but that might possibly have been my imagination.
It’s all a question now of making it through without something breaking either in the car or the people. Somehow, people you really think are going to make it onto the podium only seldom do so in Trophy events. Duct tape, baling wire, shoelaces and bits of old winches hold together many of the remaining vehicles in the competition. Vehicles which were immaculate showpieces a week ago now look like something you might see in Junkyard Wars. Take an immaculate 50,000 Euro show car, give it to a gang of delinquent teenagers for a week and it would still be in better condition than some of these vehicles. But they keep plugging on. Earlier today I was watching a car reversing fast up a steep ascent and through a long ravine because his rear winch was the only one still working. How he thought he was going to tackle the remaining forty kilometres of the stage I have no idea.
And they’re off. Stage Eight, the final stage of the Croatia Trophy is underway. It’s a brutal fight to the finish. Mud again, of course, in infinite variety. Mud in glistening, dark, oily rivers. Mud that clings to you in lumps the size of a loaf of bread. Mud that levels the field and enables long, slow overtaking using winches and a different path through the swamps. Mud that turns all the cars and the competitors exactly the same colour and forces marshals to wipe off the numbers to check vehicles through their checkpoints.
And then the finale – the cleansing crossing of the river Glena to the finish line. Colours not seen for days magically appear on the cars again. Sponsors’ stickers suddenly start to advertise again, all just in time for the lines of photographers at the finish line. Cars emerge from the Glina in a burst of spray and applause. Tired smiles and stinging backslaps are followed by excited chatter and extravagant hand gestures as competitors re-live the stage and tell their stories.
And that’s it, ladies and gentlemen – enough stories from me, your humble Croatia Trophy blogger. I hope I may just have brought this unique and fascinating event alive in your imaginion through my words. See you next year for Croatia Trophy 2011…
After a Stage Six that had to be cut short by the organisers when some of the tail-enders were only just past the half way point at 11pm and two checkpoint marshals towards the end of the stage had almost died of boredom, you would think there might be a slightly later and more humane start on the morning of Stage Seven? Hah. No chance. Late starts are obviously for wimps. Furthermore, a little bird told me Stage Seven was originally planned to be Stage One but the stage order was swapped around to accommodate a late invitation from the Mayor for the show start in Glina. To anyone who knows anything about the devious minds of organisers of Trophy events, that sets the alarm bells ringing. (And , believe me, Igor and An?elko are famously devious. Nice guys but wonderfully evil at the same time, if you know what I mean.)
As I mentioned in the first of these blogs, the organisers address some of their health and safety issues by deliberately designing Stage One to be absolutely exhausting for all the competitors. This cunning plan reduces the risk of adrenalin-driven over-enthusiasm on the part of some of the drivers which can cause silly accidents in the subsequent stages. ‘Tire ‘em out, make ‘em weak as puppies and they’ll start thinking with their heads instead of other parts of their anatomy’ is the theory. Clever stuff. It actually works.
I guessed, therefore, that if Stage Seven really was originally intended to be Stage One, it was surely going to be exceptionally tough – and I was right. Softened up by two long previous stages combining over 110 kilometres of difficult terrain, those competitors who have remained in the competition, perhaps half of the original entry numbers, had to withstand the body blow of a third inhumanly tough, muddy and long Stage Seven.
Respect. I don’t know how these people do it. Some of them, no, all of them, must be as hard as nails. The Croatia Trophy is one of the longest events on the Trophy eventing calendar but these guys (and girls – there are two female co-drivers who are amongst the very best competitors here).keep putting in an enormous athletic effort hour after hour and day after day. Many of them get virtually no sleep because they are repairing their vehicles every night, but there they are at the start every day, cheerfully cracking jokes, swapping insults and telling lies with their fellow competitors.
Stage Seven, as anticipated, turned out to be more, much more, of the same. Mud, water, trees, logs, rain, the whine of hot winches, the howl of overworked engines, the seemingly impossible achieved and achieved impressively quickly by connected teams of exceptional individuals.
As a mere blogger and laptop poker with only normal amounts of human strength, I take my hat off to them – or at least I would if it wasn’t raining again.
As Stage six begins, there’s a persistent rain pattering down through the tree canopy smelling of new leaves. There’s a tapping on your jacket shoulders and the top of your cap as the rain demands to be let in. There’s a misty light filtering through from somewhere. The forest seems ancient, but somehow fresh and virginal. You would probably find it all very beautiful and poetically inspiring if you ever had the chance to look up from your feet – but that’s something you almost never do.Why? Because of the mud.
Mud, mud and more mud. Black glue. Mud that sticks to your boots until you have to stop and poke it off with a stick or it feels like you’re walking on heavy stilts. Mud that hides quietly under an innocent carpet of last autumn’s leaves, waits for you to pass by and then swallows your leg. You haven’t got a chance against this mud. It’s the same mud that also grabs hold of powerful, speeding cars as they try to escape and easily brings them to a complete halt in a second. Desperate tyres spin, spit and spray but get nowhere. Angry engines scream in protest at being stationary. It makes no difference. The mud has got hold of its victim and a primeval struggle begins.
Co-drivers pop out of cars like rabbits out of a hole, winch straps in hand, looking around for likely winching points. Calm but urgent bluetooth discussions take place through helmet microphones and, when these don’t seem to be working, energetic hand signals and a few old fashioned colourful expressions at full volume get the communications flowing nicely. What follows is some hard wading and slipping and sliding and hard hauling of winch lines for straight pulls or quickly improvised pulley systems to double pulling power, all in an effort to escape the clinging, determined, predatory, dark chocolate mud. And then, when you’re finally free after an epic battle, there’s, yes, more mud to come.
As I said yesterday, Stage 5 was tough this year. (Last night the organisers were still looking for one team of competitors 14 hours after they had started the 58 kilometre stage.) But, it seems, to cook up a delicious Croatia Trophy Stage 6 you need take all the ingredients of Stage 5 – gulleys, ravines, creeks, streams, near-vertical banks to ascend or descend and narrow winding tracks squeezing between trees – and simply add water. And the result? Yep. Mud, mud and more mud.
Here’s a coffee table book you can enjoy every day for a year, with color photos of CroatiaTrophy 2009 offroad event. As good as these shots may be (you decide), the book hardly does justice to the feeling of offroading on CT2009, but it’s a sampler for anyone who’s been there or may be planning to go.
