For a brief moment, Dutchman Stijn Lagrand looks around in a daze. He has just climbed upside down on a rope about ten meters from one side to the other. When his legs touch the ground again, they do not know in which direction to send the body of 21-year-old Lagrand. His head also seems to give a temporary error. Ultimately, the athlete quickly continues the course to finish fourth at the World Championships Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) in Genk, Belgium. “At some moments I was a bit confused,” Lagrand realizes afterwards. “Sometimes it’s just difficult to orient yourself, because you’re completely push yourself into the red zone. I really had a hard time out there.”
Obstacle course racing is a sport in which participants almost always push the limits of what they can handle, physically and mentally. In Belgium, at the former mining site of Waterschei, the athletes go full throttle in various disciplines for three days. There is the short distance of 3 kilometers and the standard course of 14 kilometers. In both cases they have to climb over natural and man-made hills and walls, sometimes lugging a few sandbags for extra weight. They swing from ropes and rings and they constantly walk on unpaved paths.
Ninja Warrior
There’s also a 100 meter, a kind of Ninja Warrior course (which also falls under the OCR umbrella), in which various obstacles are taken at a dizzying pace. It is a separate discipline within obstacle course racing. Mark Lester Parilla, coach and competitor with the national team from the Philippines, talks with a big smile on his face about his passion for the sport. “Trying to improve yourself constantly on different courses is the challenge. I love this sport and how amazing is it to come all the way to Europe to compete with the best teams in the world?”
Weakest link
These teams come from, for example, Denmark, the Netherlands and Italy. In the team event, in which three runners complete a course over six kilometers together, Denmark seems to be winning, finishing just before the orange squad of the Netherlands. “It was very intense,” says Danish Jonas Drescher. “There were a few places where the judges had some interesting opinions about how to do the obstacles, which created a lot of panic.”
Dresher continues: “But the team event is great, it gives a lot more pressure. You don’t want to be the weakest link. Individually you can only let yourself down, but that is nothing compared to the feeling that your teammates are overperforming you and that you are the one holding them back.” After the race the Dutch get the gold medal, because the jury noticed irregularities during the race in the Danish team and gave them a time penalty. In obstacle course racing you have to overcome an obstacle the right way, explained in a rule book, judged on the ground by an official . If you don’t do this, one of your straps will be cut off and/or you will have to run a penalty lap at the end. That went wrong with the Danes.
As was the case in the 3 km short course. “It’s a complex sport,” says 28-year-old Jesse de Heer. “I had to – wrongly – repeat an obstacle a few times. I was really pissed and pushed myself to find another extra motivation. Fortunately, I was able to finish second,” says De Heer, who calls obstacle running ‘the most complete, physical sport out there’. “Endurance athletes, powerhouses and the men who know to handle the obstacle really well. We all compete against each other for the win. This is really so cool.”
Variety
The Dutch team consists of Lagrand, De Heer and Frank Oosterom. The last one explains why the sport has so much value for him. “It’s partly because of the great variety within the sport. We use our physics in so many ways: power, endurance, technical and tactical skills. Combined with the mental game to keep on going, it combines everything you want to see in a sport.”
That mental game is something to struggle with. Lagrand, who became the European champion in June: “You know what it is: there are so many uncertainties along the way. I find it difficult to stay mentally sharp all the time, you always come across an element that you are a little afraid of or that you don’t like. I was a bit worried about the load run, where you have to carry stuff up hills and that got into my head. But hey, I competed with all those super athletes, I’m pleased with that.”
