Bikepacking Trans Germany 2020 – The Final Wrap-up
Riders, followers and friends of BTG – the 2020 edition of the Bikepacking Trans Germany has been a very special one for sure.
With all the thoughts about the question whether to cancel the 2020 BTG or not due to the Covid-19 pandemic and how to make it happen the safest way possible we’ve all went through some uncertainties together, but looking back at this year’s event we’re happy and proud about the fact how all things turned out to go well.
To begin with, we want to give you some statistics:
We’ve had 42 riders at the start and 25 of them made it to the finish at Cape Arkona.
Among the finishers, 21 managed to complete the ride in less than ten days – so it has been a pretty fast year! First rough calculations seem to show a slightly faster average time than 2019. Let’s see if we dig deeper in the details here since the route has changed quite a bit this year because it wasn’t sure if it was possible to cross borders. So some bits through Czech Republic and Poland haven’t been part of the route.
This year’s fastest rider ist Flo “Supertramp” Thiessen, who spent 143 hours 29 minutes in the saddle. The Podium is completed by Ramon Berndt (158 hrs 38 mins), Oliver Näthe (162 hrs 19 mins) and Christian Manske who both started and finished together. Congratulations to you guys and congratulations to everyone!
Michi Braun, who was leading the race early on by a couple of hours in front of the later winner Flo, had to quit due to bad saddle sores. So we can only speculate about his potential finishing time, but maybe he’s coming back next year to try it again?
Even though the conditions have been kind of tough this year, the DNF-percentage is at 33%. For comparision, 2019 and 2018 it has been at 41% respectively 43%.
Speaking of finishers: Kalver Tammik made it to the cape yesterday after having been forced to quit in 2018 because of a broken frame. He came back to take care of some unfinished business and he succeeded! Congratulations to you as well, you deserved this!
Above we mentioned that route was different this year and didn’t cross the Polish border… but this doesn’t mean that there has been less wildlife this year. We’ve heard reports of a wolfpack straying through the woods around the towns of Bad Muskau and Forst on the Polish side of the border in 2016 and 2017. From 2018 on, the BTG track switched to the Polish bank of the river Neiße and almost as some kind of compensation the wolfpack crossed the German border. This year, riders have been educated about the wolves by a friendly official who recommended to take a detour for the sake of safety.
We’re happy to report that there has been no incident with wildlife this year since we know that things can also go different…just to mention relentless badgers or the infamous polar bears.
Currently, according to the WhatApp-group, we have one last rider on the track: Wolfgang Dilger is approaching Checkpoint #5. He seems to have started with a delay because of a missing part on his bike but he’s on course to finish at the Cape Arkona within the next two days. Good luck, Wolfgang, keep going! You got this!
That’s it so far from the Rügenpresse this year. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading the wrap-ups even if we couldn’t supply one every night. Fingers crossed that we make it back to normality and that 2021 will be a better year!
Thanks for reading – stay safe, enjoy riding your bike and the outdoors!
Achim, Thomas & Fabian
