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ATHLETICS

Stubborn ‘strongmen’ brave ash cloud for gruelling foot race

Nearly 9,000 tenacious runners and triathletes overcame Europe’s transport chaos at the weekend to compete in the gruelling, 18-kilometre Fisherman’s Friend Strongman Run near the western German town of Weeze.

Published: 20 April 2010 11:09 CEST
Stubborn 'strongmen' brave ash cloud for gruelling foot race
Photo: Penny Bradfield

The course, set on the barren landscape of a former British Royal Air Force base, tested the mettle of the competitors with 27 obstacles that included former nuclear weapons storage bunkers, pools of ice-cold water, mud baths and hay bales.

Click here for a photo gallery of the Fisherman’s Friend Strongman Run 2010.

It was a clean sweep for the Germans with triathlon champ Knut Höhler taking first place for the third year in a row with a time of 1 hour, 42 minutes and 26 seconds, followed by compatriots Karsten Kruck in 1:43:56 and Marco Schneider in 1:45:45.

But many of the competitors took a light-hearted approach, dressing up in novelty outfits and dragging audience members into the action – especially around the mud baths.

Competitors ranged in age from 18 to 72, with 7,997 men taking part and 917 women.

Many runners were forced to find alternative travel plans to make the race, desperately piling into buses, cars, trains and ferries to get to Weeze in the middle of the worst modern transport chaos Europe has seen.

The furthest-travelled runner came from New Zealand.

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TRAVEL

‘Close seven airports now’: How environmental group wants to change how Germans fly

A damning new report suggests the German government is propping up inefficient airports with huge subsidies. It proposes a new grid of a small number of airports connected by high-speed trains.

Published: 20 August 2020 13:03 CEST
‘Close seven airports now’: How environmental group wants to change how Germans fly
Rostock-Laage airport, where passenger numbers have been dropping. Photo: DPA

Most of us have probably never heard of them, but Kassel-Calden, Rostock-Laage and Niederrhein-Weeze are all airports you can fly from in Germany.

The problem is, hardly anybody ever uses them. Only three planes took off from Kassel-Calden on Wednesday morning. No commercial flights are taking off from Rostock-Laage for the next two days.

These are just some of the 14 regional airports that were analysed by the environmental organisation BUND. Each of the airports serves between 300,000 and 2 million passengers annually.

MUST READ: 'Flying is too cheap' – Germany considers higher flight tax

The report found that seven of the airports were of no use in terms of connecting local populations to hub airports and should be closed immediately. 

An analysis of the flight plans of the airports found that they rarely connected to hubs, instead flying to holiday destinations in Egypt, Spain and other warmer destinations.

All but two of the airports should be closed down in the medium term, the report concluded.

It also found that the airports had been propped up with €200 million in subsidies over the past four years.

“We are demanding a stop for all subsidies and tax rebates for regional airports in Germany and the EU,” said BUND chairman Olaf Bandt.

BUND proposed instead that Germany reduce its number of airports to just eight large hub airports, all of which would be connected to the national rail network with high speed connections. 

The proposal would see Lufthansa and Deutsche Bahn, both at least partially owned by the state, working together on creating an efficient network of rail and air connections.

The Association of German Airports, ADV, rejected the report's findings, saying that regional airports contribute to local economies while providing ways for migrant populations to travel home in the summer.

The financing of regional airports in Germany is in line with European law and the objectives of the EU White Paper 'Roadmap to a Single European Sky European transport area'”, the ADV said.

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