Britain’s Independent newspaper calls it ”the sports of the new millennium” when it describes and praises the winter sports discipline “Ice Cross Downhill”, a combination of ice hockey, boardercross and ski downhill. Wearing ice hockey skates and gear, four athletes at a time race down a massive 386 meter long and about five meter wide ice track in a head-to-head challenge to fight for fame and glory. Plenty of banks, jumps and steep bends make the race a spectacular and turbulent ride which demands speed, agility and a great amount of courage of the participating athletes.

Following the qualifying on the day before (individual time trial), 64 out of 100 athletes will enter the starting line-up for the final. Four Ice Cross Downhill athletes at a time will compete in a head-to-head battle on an ice course of a vertical height difference of 35 meters that is peppered with numerous obstacles. The two fastest riders of each battle will enter the next round until the finale grande will have the remaining four athletes compete for victory! It’s going to be the 32 fastest athletes of the Munich event who will automatically qualify for the preliminary race (individual time trial) in Quebec. The athlete with the highest number of world championship points out of these two races will go down as the first Ice Cross Downhill world champion ever.

Up to 90,000 spectators (Quebec 2009) have come to the Red Bull Crashed Ice events to watch the race from right behind the boards. A newly created sports discipline, Ice Cross Downhill was first practiced in Stockholm, and it soon became an audience favorite and crowd puller due to action-packed races, spectacular settings as well as the boardercross-style format on courses in Moscow, Prague, Lausanne, and Quebec. While in the past years, only single contests were organized, 2010 will see the first world champion being crowned. In order to avoid home field advantage for any of the winter sports and ice hockey nations in Europe and the US, the world championship premiere events takes place on both these continents.

One of the most probable candidates to win the first world championship title is Sweden’s Jasper Felder, Bandy national player (Scandinavian type of ice hokey) and trained dancer. He has won seven races so far and can hardly wait to race the new mode: “Ice Cross Downhill is the ultimate challenge and discipline; quite obviously, I would like to become the first world champion!”

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