In a few hours, Le Grand Tour will start with a prologue on top of the Branäs mountain. Teams will then get a few hours sleep before the real start of this challenging 24 hour race Saturday morning in Trysil (Norway).
Le Grand Tour is the fourth and final race in the Swedish Adventure Racing Series. Unfortunately, team Haglöfs Silva has missed the other three races, as we focused on the AR World Series race Gallaecia Raid in Spain and the Haglöfs Åre Extreme Challenge during spring season.
Le Grand Tour has in total 25 teams on the lineup, most of them in the mixed category. Haglöfs Silva will be represented by Aaron, Josefina, Mattias and Robert. The race is organized by Karlstad Multisport and this is probably one of the world’s oldest, still running, adventure races, first edition organised in 1998. This year’s edition will not be the longest, but maybe one of the more challenging ones. Race course covers several thousand meters of climbing, long white water kayaking, adventure swimming and long mountain bike sections during night. Teams will spend many hours in alpine areas and temperatures during night time will probably be below zero degrees celsius…
For those not in Branäs, the race can be followed LIVE on internet: http://www.arseries.se/live/lgt-2015/
Race director of Le Grand Tour, Erik Putsep, also organised the Swedish Championship in Ljungdalen 2013, probably one of the best 24 hour races we have raced with a beautiful and varied race course in challenging terrain. According to pre race information, this edition of Le Grand Tour might be something similar. Photos below are from the Swedish Champs in 2013 where Mattias and Josefina won the mixed category and Björn and Robert was the fastest male team.
Race maps can be found here: www.arseries.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/LGT-2015_Alla-kartor.pdf