The unof­fi­cial world cham­pi­onship in Out­door Sports, the out­doortro­phy, is one of the tough­est relay com­pe­ti­tions in the world for moun­tain run­ning, paraglid­ing, white-water kayak­ing and moun­tain bik­ing. Olympic cham­pi­ons, World cham­pi­ons, Euro­pean cham­pi­ons, inter­na­tion­al extreme-sports stars and ambi­tious ama­teurs have gath­ered to chal­lenge their lim­its here since 2002. 1000 ath­letes and staff as well as 10000 enthu­si­as­tic view­ers were con­sis­tent­ly impressed each year – and we would like to once again thank every sin­gle one of you!

Now the out­doortro­phy (at least in Vorarl­berg) has become his­to­ry. It is with a heavy heart that we announce the 2023 can­cel­la­tion. There are 3 rea­sons for this:

1. Ill­w­erke vkw (The own­er is the state of Vorarl­berg. Gov­ern­ment par­ty: ÖVP/Grüne) have informed us that the cost of the water for the kayak­ers has risen. Instead of the pre­vi­ous approx. 2000 Euros a day, the costs are now 20000 Euros a day. (We were informed of this even before the Ukraine war, so the ener­gy cri­sis has noth­ing to do with it). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this we can­not afford.

2. The State of Vorarl­berg sup­ports the depart­ments of Tourism and Sport with 10 mil­lion euros a year, fund­ing over 2000 projects. The promised fund­ing of 5000 euros for the lat­est out­doortro­phy was not paid out until today due to insub­stan­tial rea­sons (both depart­ments are under ÖVP lead­er­ship (LR Chris­t­ian Gant­ner and LR Mar­ti­na Rüsch­er). Based on what the out­doortro­phy has giv­en to the state of Vorarl­berg, this amount is sym­bol­ic any­way. There­fore, we con­sid­er the way this pro­ce­dure was han­dled an affront and a slap in the face for every­one who has asked them­selves: “Ask not what your coun­try can do for you, but what you can do for your coun­try.”

3. The sec­ond access road to the rail­road sta­tion Lin­ge­nau, which is impor­tant for the out­dootro­phy and essen­tial for safe­ty, was sud­den­ly closed again after 110 years, con­tra­dict­ing the high­est court deci­sion of the VfGH to keep it open. (May­or Ange­li­ka Schwarz­mann – ÖVP) We do not have the time to wait on a new deci­sion of the VfGH.

Cor­rup­tion comes in many forms and has many faces. The sta­tis­tics sur­round­ing cor­rup­tion and Austria´s inter­na­tion­al rank­ing speak vol­umes. These 3 mea­sures were all tak­en under ÖVP influ­ence. Any con­nec­tion with our par­ty “Xi-Chance Zukun­ft” -which we found­ed due to the cat­a­stroph­ic polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Vorarl­berg- is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal…

My deep­est thanks for the many friend­ships found in the last 20 years!

– Chris Alge, founder and com­pe­ti­tion direc­tor of the out­doortro­phy since 2002, in the name of the whole out­doortro­phy team.

About the out­doortro­phy