Groß-Gerau 2008 - Part 1

In short: Peter gained 2nd place in Groß-Gerau, in the category Schuler C. Wohooooo!!!

I will compose a more complete description, cut in several posts so they won't be too long.

The Team
Our team consisted of 6 kids, aged 7-13, two girls and 4 boys.

Travel
It was a long ride, 12 hours, but went smooth. We feared traffic near Frankfurt on Friday afternoon but luckily we did not meet any. Google Maps' route plan worked great and helped us get to our destination easily, almost exactly to the house we were looking for.

B&B
We stayed in Worfelden, just about 4-5 miles from Groß-Gerau, in a nice B&B (Frühstückspension Riegel, Worfelden, Wilhelm Hammann Str. 45). It was so typically German, 'alles in Ordnung' style. Comfortable rooms, nice and helpful landlady, super breakfasts. Frau Riegel did everything she could to make our stay comfortable and showed great patience and tolerance towards our (sometimes noisy) team.

The track
The track itself consists of a 200m banked oval with a concrete center place, and a 304m long, 4-corner, unbanked flat track. Most of the races were held on the 304m track, only the adult/junior sprinters competing for the 300m sprints used the banked track.
The surrounding area is very nice green, just behind the local hospital. The event was organized professionally, with 20+ international judges, 2 ex-racer speakers performing really well throughout the 3 days, olympic-style opening ceremony, all kinds of facilities and a lot of merchants.
The kids spent a lot of time in the boots, checking out every detail of any equipment - but if you do a technical sport, you know exactly what I mean, what great pleasure it is to take even the 100th wheel in your hands... :)