Stair run (running competition)

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The flight of stairs . (Also (especially Austrian :). Stieg run ; Towerrunning , Stair Climbing , Skyscraper Racing or Vertical Running ) is a running race where the athletes a skyscraper , a tower or a stair climb in the wild.

Historical development

The first documented stair race with timekeeping was held in 1905 up to the first platform of the Eiffel Tower in Paris .

The modern era of stair climbing began in 1978 with the first staging of the Empire State Building Run Up in New York City and the CN Tower Climb in Toronto (last on 3 days in mid-October). In addition to these two races in North America, which were held for the 37th year in 2014, there are numerous other stair runs that have become established and have now been held over ten times. In the Asian region, the Swissotel Vertical Marathon in Singapore looks back on the longest history with 25 events. The Perlachturmlauf in Augsburg is the most frequently held staircase event in Germany with 24 editions since 1989 and at the same time the first flight of stairs in a historical building. The run is considered a classic step sprint (261 steps), the record is held by Roland Wegner with 47.28 seconds.

training

The flight of stairs originally served as a variation in the training of athletes , footballers and other athletes. As with mountain running , the abdominal and leg muscles are stressed significantly more when running stairs than when running normally. In particular, the leg extension are ( quadriceps femoris ) , the thighs back sides ( biceps femoris ) and the large gluteal muscles ( gluteus maximus ) trained. Running up the stairs can improve both strength and endurance . The energy consumption when climbing stairs or extreme inclines can be up to ten times that on a horizontal route.

Towers and tracks

Most stair running events take place in skyscrapers and towers. The world's tallest towers and skyscrapers with flights of stairs are the CN Tower in Toronto, Taipei 101 in Taipei, the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Willis Tower in Chicago. The indoor runs with the highest number of steps are the “Millennium Tower Run Up” in Vienna with 2529 steps with 3 ascents and the Fight for Air Climb Chicago in the Presidential Towers with 2340 steps with 4 towers. The most famous flight of stairs takes place every year at the beginning of February at the Empire State Building Run Up in New York. Participation in the event is only possible by invitation of the New York Road Runners and usually requires corresponding success in other tower running events or series. The Australian Paul Crake holds the record in the Empire State Building. It only took him 9 minutes and 33 seconds to climb the 1,576 steps. There are also regular flights of stairs in historical buildings such as the Perlach Tower in Augsburg or the Bennington Monument.

Only a few flights of stairs are used on external routes, e.g. B. held along mountain railways, which include, in particular, very long and, compared to the tower runs, competitions with many stages. The longest flight of stairs takes place since 2005 in Radebeul place (Germany): The Saxon Mt. Everest staircase Marathon total of 39,700 steps are on a circuit in the vineyards of Radebeul at 100 laps up and down to cover a total increase of 8,848 meters. This height difference corresponds exactly to the current official height of Mount Everest , which is the basis for the name of the event. In addition, the distance to be covered in the horizontal plane corresponds to a double marathon of 84.39 km. The record for individual starters is under 13.5 hours for men and around 16.25 hours for women; 156 ascents and descents were completed in 24 hours . Other significant flights of stairs on external routes include the Swiss Niesenlauf with 11,674 steps on the longest staircase in the world and the Staircup in Partenen, Austria, with 3,610 steps. Since 2012, the Reißeck Wadlbeißer has also been held along the mountain railway in Zandlach (Austria) with 8971 steps. In Bottrop, the tetrahedron flight of stairs has taken place annually since 2013 on the approx. 120 m above sea level high dump on Beckstrasse with 1847 steps.

Geographical distribution of the events

A total of 192 official stair climbing events were held worldwide in 2012, with the North American continent leading with 112 flights of stairs. In addition to the Empire State Building Run Up and the CN Tower Climb, there is a regional cluster of high-class tower running events, especially in Chicago . In Europe, the major cities of Frankfurt am Main , Berlin , Vienna , Basel , Warsaw and London in particular are the venues for international staircases. A strong tower running scene is also developing in Eastern Europe, where there is a great tradition, especially in Poland, and with the Run Up series in the Czech Republic in 2008, a staircase series consisting of several races was held for the first time. So far there have only been a few events in southern Europe and Scandinavia.

In Asia, the flights of stairs are mainly concentrated in the metropolises in the Far East and the Gulf States. Large and internationally high-class fields of participants can be found every year in Singapore , Kuala Lumpur , Dubai and Taipei , where the Taipei 101 Run Up has been held since 2005. On June 15, 2008, the German extreme athlete Thomas Dold conquered the 91 floors and 2046 steps of the " Taipei 101 ", at that time the highest skyscraper in the world. It took him 10 minutes and 53 seconds.

There is great future potential in South and Central America, where, driven by the growing media interest and the commitment of numerous organizers and associations, major events are being held, especially in Bogota and Sao Paulo. So far, no official staircase event has taken place on the African continent. An event planned for 2011 in Nairobi was canceled at short notice.

Flight of stairs in German-speaking countries

After the United States of America, most stair running events take place in Germany (19 competitions) and Austria (13 competitions), with an extraordinarily wide range of distances and number of steps being covered. The races in German-speaking countries with an international team are the SkyRun MesseTurm Frankfurt, the Towerrunning Basel, the Millennium Tower Run Up in Vienna and the thyssenkrupp Towerrun. A characteristic of stair running in Germany and Austria are sprint races with less than 400 steps. Twelve of the 13 shortest flights of stairs in the 2012 season were held in Germany and Austria. On the other hand, the three longest races of the 2012 season also took place in German-speaking countries.

Stair running as a competitive sport

Competition mode

The thyssenkrupp Towerrun on the thyssenkrupp test tower is the highest flight of stairs in Western Europe

In most staircase events, the time and position of the individual participants is recorded. For this purpose, timekeeping by means of transponders has prevailed in almost all races. The single start procedure is used as the competition mode for many runs, in which the runners run the course one after the other or in small groups and the fastest net time decides on the ranking. Few tower running events, including the internationally known Empire State Building Run Up, use the mass start procedure, in which the participants start the race at the same time and the sequence at the finish is decided. Other competition formats are also increasingly being established. This includes tournament formats with several consecutive rounds, multi climbs with several towers or several ascents in a tower as well as races with a limited total time and recording of the completed laps on a circuit.

Prices

At some events there are cash and material prizes and in some cases leading elite stair runners are invited to the races and receive z. B. free flights or overnight accommodations are made available.

Coordination of stair running

Several national and international organizations are involved in the coordination of stair running. The Towerrunning World Association under the leadership of Slovak President Daniel Cecetka plays a leading role in this. Representatives of the national associations, athletes and race organizers are organized in the Towerrunning World Council as the central sports-political body of this association. The Towerrunning World Association records all races held in a database, publishes the race results of the stair runs and maintains the world rankings "Towerrunning World Cup". National stair running associations that cooperate with the Towerrunning World Association in hosting major events have developed in recent years in the USA, Austria, Germany and Australia, among others. In Switzerland there is currently no national stair running association. The International Skyrunning Federation is also involved in the coordination of stair running competitions, which in addition to organizing mountain running events (skyrunning) also oversees some stair runs and, with the Vertical World Circuit, advertises a commercial international stair run series. In Europe, clubs and marketing initiatives such as Run2Sky or the Chris-from-Paris organization also play a role in the coordination and marketing of stair running.

Towerrunning World Cup

The Towerrunning World Cup is a rating system established by the Towerrunning Office Vienna in the 2009 season and supported by the Towerrunning World Association since 2013 for the comparison of the international stair-running elite. Based on a point evaluation, the best athletes are determined over the entire season. Almost all races held during a season are taken into account for the Towerrunning World Cup. In contrast to other stair running scoring systems, sprint races, ultra stair races and races with complex tournament formats (e.g. multi climbs) are included in the scoring. The best 30 runners in each of the rated races receive a descending point value, which is multiplied by a weighting factor assigned according to defined criteria. The best eight results during a season are counted for each runner. The central framework of each season are the 16 to 20 so-called Masters Races, which are selected by the Towerrunning World Association based on the fields of participants in the last two years as well as technical and organizational criteria and given a higher weighting factor. Since 2013, the ranking has been continuously created based on the results of the last 52 weeks.

The World Cup ranking also serves as a qualification basis for invitation races and the official World Cup final race in Bogota, which is traditionally hosted on December 8th each year by the Colombian Athletics Association, the National Olympic Committee of Colombia and the Towerrunning World Association. Due to the high altitude of the Colombian capital, the race is particularly demanding. The World Cup final race is the most endowed race of the season in terms of total prize money and prizes in kind.

The Towerrunning World Cup has been won four times in a row by the German stair runner Thomas Dold since it was launched in the 2009 season , and the Pole Pjotr ​​Lobodzinski was successful from 2013 to 2017. With Suzanne Walsham (Australia, 2009 and 2012 to 2017), Melissa Moon (New Zealand, 2010) and Cristina Bonacina (Italy, 2011), the women’s standings have seen three different winners so far. The Nations Cup was won by Germany in 2009, 2011 and 2012, the United States of America prevailed in 2010, Australia in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017 and the Czech Republic in 2016.

Further international stair flight series

The Vertical World Circuit, announced by the International Federation of Skyrunning since 2009, is currently the only staircase series besides the Towerrunning World Cup, which consists of runs in several countries. In the 2013 season the series includes 9 races in 8 countries. The Vertical World Circuit has had its own final race since 2011, to which the best-placed runners are invited. Both the victory in the final race and in the overall series were endowed with prize money until 2012. Thomas Dold won the Vertical World Circuit in all editions up to 2012. In the women's category, Suzanne Walsham (Australia) also won the 2013 season as defending champion.

In the 2009 season, the Run2Sky Europe racing series, consisting of tower running events, was held in Basel, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Berlin. The series was initiated and won by Thomas Dold. Marie-Fee Breyer, who was 11 years old at the time, came out on top in the women’s competition. The series was discontinued after the first season. A new edition is currently not foreseeable.

Important flights of stairs in high-rise buildings or towers

The Empire State Building, site of the annual Empire State Building Run-Up .
Skyscraper / tower city stages
Millennium Tower Vienna 2,529
One World Trade Center New York City 2,226
Sears Tower Chicago 2,109
Taipei 101 Taipei 2,046
CN Tower Toronto 1,776
John Hancock Center Chicago 1,632
Empire State Building new York 1,576
Sydney Tower Sydney 1,504
US Bank Tower los Angeles 1,500
thyssenkrupp test tower Rottweil 1,390
Swissotel The Stamford Singapore 1,336
Wachovia Center Miami 1,210
MesseTurm Frankfurt am Main 1,202
Three Logan Square Philadelphia 1,088
Rhine tower Dusseldorf 960
Park Inn by Radisson Berlin Alexanderplatz Berlin 770
Cologne Tower Cologne 714
City skyscraper Leipzig 700
Skyscraper Uptown Munich Munich 632
Minster tower Ulm 560
Exhibition tower Basel 542
Residential high-rise ideal Berlin 465
Perlach Tower augsburg 261
Telchi tower near Wilhelmsfeld in the Odenwald 192

Athletes (selection)

  • Thomas Dold , specialist for the long haul
  • Matthias Jahn
  • Roland Wegner , specialist for the short haul
  • Paul Crake , record holder for the run on the Empire State Building
  • Christian Riedl, record holder at the SkyRun MesseTurm

Running stairs as a discipline in fire fighting

Running up stairs is also becoming increasingly popular in fire fighting sports, and training is usually done with full (breathing) protective equipment . There are now numerous separate competitions for this. Examples are the Arque-Skyrun over the 54 floors of the Frankfurt Messeturm or the Berlin Firefighter Stairrun , in which two-man teams in complete protective equipment and connected breathing apparatus have to cope with the 39 floors up to the roof terrace of the Park Inn Berlin-Alexanderplatz . Occasionally, in individual cases, individual firefighters with protective clothing and possibly also with respiratory protection take part in a run that is otherwise only attended by normal athletes.

The Toughest Firefighter Alive competition includes a flight of stairs over 15 to 35 floors or about 60 to 80 meters in altitude as one of four stations.

literature

Sources and web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ All you need to know about the Eiffel Tower (PDF; 432 kB) accessed on February 19, 2013
  2. ↑ Race Up The Eiffel Tower Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 12, 13 January 1906, Page 13
  3. ↑ Flight of stairs with more than 10 editions up to 2011 ( Memento of the original from October 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / towerrunning.com
  4. ↑ Energy cost of walking and running at extreme uphill and downhill slopes. AE Minetti et al., Journal of Applied Physiology , 2002 vol. 93 no. 3 1039-1046
  5. ↑ The 10 tallest buildings with flights of stairs in the 2012 season ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / towerrunning.com
  6. ↑ All winners of the Empire State Building Run Up ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / towerrunning.com
  7. ↑ http://www.tetraeder-treppenlauf.de
  8. ↑ Event database of all official stair runs , Towerrunning World Association.
  9. ^ German wins race up Taipei 101 tower , The China Post , June 16, 2008.
  10. ↑ Prizes at the World Cup Final in Bogota
  11. ↑ It's getting serious once more for Thomas Dold
  12. ↑ Towerrunning World Association (PDF; 330 kB) accessed on April 29, 2016
  13. ↑ Towerrunning World Counil
  14. ↑ Towerrunning World Cup ( Memento of the original from January 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed February 18, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / towerrunning.com
  15. ^ USA Stair Climbing Association , accessed February 18, 2013.
  16. ↑ Towerrunning Austria , accessed on January 27, 2017.
  17. ↑ Towerrunning Germany , accessed on January 22, 2017.
  18. ^ Stair Climbing Australia , accessed February 18, 2013.
  19. ^ Vertical World Circuit , accessed February 18, 2013.
  20. ↑ Towerrunning World Cup 2013 ( Memento of the original from January 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 101 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / towerrunning.com
  21. ↑ Towerrunning World Cup 2011 - The final in Bogota , accessed on February 19, 2013.
  22. ↑ Towerrunning World Cup Final Bogota , accessed February 19, 2013.
  23. ↑ Home win for Juan Pablo Rangel at the stair run in Bogota runnersworld.de, accessed on February 19, 2013
  24. ^ Event website of the Carrera Ascenso Torre Colpatria , accessed on February 19, 2013.
  25. ↑ Statistics of the tower running season 2009-2017 ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / towerrunning.com
  26. ^ Vertical World Circuit 2013 , accessed February 5, 2017
  27. ↑ Run2Sky Europe ( Memento of the original from November 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed February 19, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / run2sky-europe.com
  28. ^ Tower Climb NYC. In: https://www.crowdrise.com . Retrieved on September 17, 2019 (English): "There is a total of 2,226 steps to get to the 102nd floor."
  29. ↑ thyssenkrupp TOWERRUN: 1,390 steps - 232 vertical meters - 100% epic! Accessed October 2, 2018 (German).
  30. ↑ FKC Medienproduktionsges. FFM mbH - Christian Ament: MesseTurm SkyRun Frankfurt: SkyRun. Retrieved October 2, 2018 .
  31. ↑ KölnTurm flight of stairs: 39 floors - 714 steps - 100% fun. Accessed October 2, 2018 (German).
  32. ^ Stair run Berlin Firefighter Stairrun, accessed on May 20, 2008
  33. ↑ http://www.tfa-berlin.de/index.php/toughest-firefighter-alive/beschreibung.html Toughest Firefighter Alive (TFA) Berlin, 2015. Accessed April 28, 2015.