On the weekend of September 6th to 8th 2019 the 4th Tree Climbing Championship of Southern Germany, organized by DRAYER, took place in the beautiful spa gardens of Bad Bellingen.
There were 29 participants at the start and we experienced a very nice and exciting championship at a high level. In a perfect competition weather and pleasant temperatures the Gear-Check took place on Friday and the preliminary round on Saturday.
Preliminary round
The trees were not so huge, but the courses were still very interesting and demanding. In particular, the tree for work climbing offered a lot of potential to show your skills, or to give away a lot of points in case of too much risk. Certainly a highlight of this day we experienced with Viktor von Magnus, who is just 14 years old and has huge potential. Great respect for this performance! As experienced as an old hand, he completed the course with the third best result and had to defeat only Ryan Mills and the winner of this discipline Miguel Jofre Lillo. In the rescue station, Miguel Jofre Lillo prevailed before Andy Richter, followed by Jannis Böttcher in third place. Also the Open Ascent station Miguel was able to win ahead of Jannis Böttcher and Andy Richter. One of the locals was the winner of the throwline station with fabulous 29 points, Nico Köpfer got the victory ahead of Jannis Böttcher and Andy Richter. Also at the Speed-Climb, Gottfried Schlichenmaier a local from Freiburg won with just under three seconds ahead of Christian Wiech and Jannis Böttcher.
The women's competition summary is a little shorter, as Nadja Klausmann, the winner of the last two years won all disciplines of the preliminary round ahead of Stephanie Cullen.
The Saturday went by in a great atmosphere and beautiful climbing weather. Only for the the big DRAYER anniversary party in the evening, with the coolest band in the region "THE CORNERSTONES", the luck left us a little bit. The weather got worse and it was already raining slightly and then it spilled out of buckets for 10 minutes. Luckily it did not break the party and the atmosphere was great late into the night.
Qualified for the Masters on Sunday were Miguel Jofre Lillo (1), Andy Richter (2) and Jannis Böttcher (3). However, since Andy Richter could not stay for the final, the fourth placed Lucas Winterer moved up. The two participating women fight out the Masters among themselves.
Finals
Unfortunately, the finals on Sunday took place in quite mixed weather with regular rain showers. Nevertheless, it was an exciting competition and the tree for the Masters would definitely have been worthy the Masters of a German Championship. In the end, the moved up Lucas Winterer was just ahead of Jannis Böttcher and Miguel Jofre Lillo and became the 4th South German champion in tree climbing. Nadja Klausmann won for the third time in a row the woman competition.
We from DRAYER are very happy about the incredibly beautiful and successful event and would like to thank all the participants for the exciting competitions, the sponsors for their support and especially many thanks to all the helpers, without them such an event would not be possible. We are looking forward to the next championship with you!
Your DRAYER team