Cardio. Agility. Stamina. They're the keys to the podium in the world's fastest sport on skates, as proved by the dominant performance of the 2014 World Champion, Marco Dallago. But how do you stay in shape for Red Bull Crashed Ice when there's no ice?
If you listen carefully as you wander in the hills near Graz, Austria, you'll hear birds singing, the wind in the summer treetops and an odd wooden rumbling punctuated by the sound of laughter, a crash or both. Follow that sound and you may stumble upon a very special place: the Couch Garden Forest.
The words "off season" aren't in the vocabulary of the 2014 Ice Cross Downhill World Champion, Marco Dallago. Last summer, Marco, his brother, Luca, and their team-mate, Andreas Wirnstl, created the Couch Garden – a training facility in the forest. The focal point: a long, twisty, jump-filled downhill track made of wood that enables them to practice their ice cross technique with inline skates. (And, yes, they put a real couch out there, too. Even champions have to rest sometime.)
While Red Bull Crashed Ice athletes typically worked out year round with weights, running, hockey and so on, the idea of simulating race conditions with a wooden track had its sceptics. But, by the end of the 2014 season, when Marco won the championship, Luca jumped up in the rankings from 19th to fourth, and their Couch Garden Crew finished first overall in team competition, even the doubters were convinced that stepping up summer training was a very good idea.
"I've already seen two new Couch Garden-style tracks. It's great to see that the riders take the initiative and build their own training tracks to improve their skills," says Marco.
Wooden tracks aren't the only simulators. Take French competitor Pacôme Schmitt: Having earned his first Red Bull Crashed Ice podium last season, he's hungry for more. So he, and fellow contender Tristan Dugerdil, have not only been doing their usual intensive core and aerobic workouts, but with a sense of humour they even tested out inline skates on a gravel ski resort track – a challenging downhill course, but a gnarly surface for a fall!
The Dallagos, meanwhile, are back at their original Couch Garden track. "There's always space to improve, but I think the concept of training we had last summer was very good, so we didn't make any major changes," Marco comments.
However, the brothers do like to experiment with cross training. Earlier in the off-season, Marco tried out snowskates – kind of like a ski boot with a metal-edged base on the sole. He and Luca also ran the Graz Athlon footrace event, a tough 10-kilometre urban obstacle course through their hometown, and Marco took on the Wings for Life World Run, where more than 35,000 runners raced simultaneously all over the world in support of spinal cord research.
The brothers have also registered for the X-Dream Camp, a multi-day, multi-sport session hosted in the Swiss Alps every summer by 2013 Ice Cross Downhill World Champion Derek Wedge. "We believe that it's one of the greatest training possibilities for ice cross downhill, because it contains a very versatile combination of skiing, surfing on wakeboards and mountainbike downhill," says Marco. "Every single one of those sports helps to improve the feeling for your body and ultimately the skill to make it at Red Bull Crashed Ice."
He goes on with a laugh, "And more important, it's going to be crazy fun!"
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