Yesterday’s eight and final stage in the Alpirace, was canceled in Antholz, due to the high temperatures. Overall, Joël put down a best result in the open purebred class. Winning the Alpirace is a great achievement and yet another trophy to cherish for the ever-successful Run Before Beauty team! Congratulations Ingrid & Joël!

Download the general result list for all 7 stages here.

In the seventh stage of the Alpirace, held in Antholz, Italy, Joël came in second just a few seconds slower than his “Alpirace-rival”, the German Rick Göpfert. You can look at the detailed result list of this stage here (.xls file). Today, Joël is running the eight and final stage of the Alpirace. After that, Joël returns home for a very brief moment … to leave Belgium again for training – wherever there is snow

The other team members continue training in Belgium and abroad. Some will leave for Switserland debut February for a final training check. Others remain here and prepare for the WC on dirt. Hopefully, the temperatures will drop a bit in February, so the teams can refocus some more on speed training. With the current wet and muddy conditions, it is very difficult to find a clean and hard training trail in Belgium.

After a four-day low-snow race, Danny finished on a very respectable fourth place, leaving a lot of Siberian team behind him. A very big applause to his achievement!

Check out the final results here.

Check out the results here

Danny approaching in the back He moved up to third place overall!

Check out Stage 2 (24th of January) results here

 
Danny Bulens is currently participating in one of the toughest distance sleddog races in West/Central Europe, the Sedivackuv Long in Czechia. On the first stage he claimed an awesome fourth place with his All Alaskan Malamute Team … including 2 Siberian Huskis, the famous leader Lisa and Lana from Run Before Beauty. Out of 24 starters in the LT2 class (=5-8 dogs long trail), this result is very good indeed. Danny is a “veteran” of the Sedivackuv long, and participates for the sixth time.

 Check out the results of the first stage here.

Besides the mushers participating in the WC2008 in Sweden, there are of course other Belgians (and Mushing Belgium vzw members) participating in races around the world.

Sam & Dries ran the Copper Basin 300 in Alaska, thus qualifying themselves for the 2008 Iditarod. They had quite a hard time, as you can read on their website, but now they can fully focus on the Iditarod in March.

Danny Bulens and Myriam are currently in Czechia to participate in the Sedivackuv Long 2008 with their All Alaskan Malamute (& 1 Siberian Husky) team. This is a very challenging longtrail (222km) with a bivuac. However, even there the snow conditions are far from optimal, which might alter the distance of this race. Visit their website, Snowfoot’s, here.

Like in 2007, Mr Winter decided to take a (long) brake resulting in abnormaly warm temperatures, rain, heavy wind … and mud, mud, mud! It becomes a real challenge to get some serious training runs out of this.

Some are lucky enough to dedicate their winter to the everlasting quest for snow, though

With their new Iveco custom motorhome, Joël & Ingrid are participating in the 8-stage Alpirace. Stage 5 & 6 were held in Unterjoch as well, but did not count towards the Alpirace end result, due to the dangerous (=icy) trail.

However, Joël ran with a six-dog team and reconfirmed the good shape his dogs are in. They are currently training in Italy, near the Rechenpass.

Joël is currently participating in the Alpirace, a eight-stage sprint-trophy race in Germany. Europe’s finest sprint mushers compete in one of the biggest sleddog events in Europe.

With his purebred Unlimited team, Joël won the 4th stage in Unterjoch, leaving the German Rick Göpfert in second place. The uncountable training hours are paying off, and that the main objective – gold in Sweden – comes within reach.

Check out this superb video reporting on day 2 of the Unterjoch etappe – and on Joël’s marvelous victory!

Today, we introduced the musher’s registration forms with the World Championship 2008 Organisation. We entered 6 mushers for Team Belgium & 2 freelance Belgian mushers, totalling 8 Belgian’s running in the WC.

Follow the build-up of the entrants list here.

Debut February, some team members will already move north to prepare in snow conditions. By March 4th, all teams will be in the Asarna race area. We will try to feed news live from there! So stay tuned!