SA athlete takes on Red Bull X-Alps

SOUTH AFRICAN athlete Duncan Kotze is set to compete in one of the world’s toughest adventure races.

Kotze, a 41-year-old building contractor from Cape St Francis, is South Africa’s sole entry in this year’s Red Bull X-Alps event, a 1 000km hiking and paragliding event across the Alps.

Since receiving his paragliding licence in France in 1999, Kotze has gone on to participate in several competitions, including the 2015 Paragliding World Cup in India, where he came 64th out of 130 athletes. He is ranked 7th in South African paragliding and has remained in the top 10 for the last 10 years.

Team SA is made up of Kotze and his official supporter, Johan de Bruijn, who manages Kotze’s competition strategy and nutrition, among other things.

Kotze followed an intensive training regimen, which he says included “100km or more of cycling, two hours of swimming (and) three hours of running” a week.

The athlete’s training was waylaid in March, when he broke several ribs. This did not stop Kotze. “I was out of training for three weeks and then got back into it, but just very mild training to keep the cardio up,” he said.

The race, which kicked off in Salzburg, Austria, yesterday, will see 31 participants from 20 countries navigating along seven turn-points in six countries to reach their final destination in Monaco. Participants will traverse the rugged Alpine regions both on foot and by air.

The X-Alps event was launched in 2003 and has since taken place every second year. This year will be the 8th edition of the event. The 2015 edition saw Christian Maurer of Switzerland take first place for the fourth time in a row.

Maurer, 34, holds the record for the event, having completed it in six days, 23 hours and 40 minutes in 2013.

The main event was preceded by the Leatherman Prologue, a one-day hiking and paragliding race. The top three participants in the prologue receive a night pass for the X-Alps event, allowing them to hike for one night while their competitors take a mandatory rest period. German Sebastian Huber and Italian Aaron Durogati claimed a joint win for the prologue on Thursday. Kotze’s progress can be followed via live tracking at redbullxalps.com.