Batavierenrace is the biggest relay race in the world. Each year it welcomes 350 teams with 25 members each and covers 175 km long route leading from Nijmegen to Enschede. Besides a bit cold and unstable weather, this year’s race went just according to plan and participants didn’t experience any unpleasant incidents. The first runners crossed the finish line at the UT campus around 17:30.
Nijmegen at the top
Batavierenrace has two sets of winners – one team from the university competition and one overall winner. RU/HAN team from Nijmegen became the university winner of the 44th Batavierenrace, repeating their success from last year. RU/HAN took the lead in the morning and hasn’t left the first place ever since, finishing with the total time of 10 hours and 20 minutes. Amsterdam finished second and RUG Hanze ACLO team from Groningen secured a third place.
The victory of the overall competition went to team S.N.O.T, followed by Team Cifla in the second place and Team Eindhoven in third.
Runners faster than cars
The international ECIU team has also been quite successful. Although the ECIU team ended up at the 28th place, they won many of the individual stages. 'It went fantastic,' thinks Sander Lotze, the team leader. 'Individually we did excellent. Many of our runners were first or second on their stages. Actually, some of our runners were so fast that they had to wait for the cars. Our van, which was driving the other runners to the next stage, got stuck in a traffic jam and couldn´t be there on time, so we even got extra penalty, yet we are in the top thirty. We are very happy about that.'
Andreas Åhwall from the ECIU team was actually the first man to cross the finish line at the Sintelbaan, outrunning all other competitors with impressive speed of 20.63 km/h. 'I´m satisfied with the performance,' modestly says Åhwall, who came to the Netherlands from Sweden only to run in Batavierenrace. 'I think we had a good, mixed team. We were fastest on several tracks. Overall, it was a very fun day.'
