XTERRA Bel­gium – Part­ner Event of the XTERRA Ger­many 2018

Since 2017, the orga­niz­er club O-SEE Sports selects an event of the XTERRA Euro­pean Tour as part­ner event of the year. This year, XTERRA Bel­gium was cho­sen. Rea­son for the ORGTEAM boss of the XTERRA Ger­many Ben­no to con­duct a short inter­view with Flo­ri­an of the XTERRA Bel­gium team before he trav­els to Namur with 15 club mem­bers to par­tic­i­pate in the spec­tac­u­lar race in and over the Meuse:

Ben­no: only in a few years XTERRA Bel­gium became on of the most pop­u­lar XTERRA Events in Europe. Why? Whats the secret, what´s the dec­la­ra­tion of this amaz­ing develep­ment?

Flo­ri­an: We are chance to be at the cross­roads of Europe. The great triathlon nations are our neigh­bours. France is the coun­try where there are the most XTERRA ath­letes and we feel it. This year again we will wel­come more than 550 for­eign­ers includ­ing 300 French! I also think that Namur is per­fect­ly locat­ed in Bel­gium. A great den­si­ty of sports­men live very close to this city and it is very easy of access. We also have 3 inter­na­tion­al air­ports with­in 45′ of the event. It is very easy to come to Namur.

Ben­no: One rea­son ist he par­ty after the race …

Flo­ri­an: It is impor­tant that ath­letes have an expe­ri­ence, not just a triathlon. Bel­gium has the rep­u­ta­tion of being a friend­ly coun­try where peo­ple know how to have fun and like to par­ty. We want to show that this is true. We try to be very pro­fes­sion­al in the organ­i­sa­tion of the race but above all we want the par­tic­i­pants to remem­ber that they came to Bel­gium and that it was an excep­tion­al atmos­phere. The clos­ing par­ty is there­fore log­i­cal­ly very impor­tant!

Ben­no: Our organ­i­sa­tion team is a great fam­i­ly and there are cca 20 mem­bers of O-SEE Sports club work­ing in this team. And we are „toiled all year“ ;-), to pre­pare the event – year after year. 18 long years… And every­body do that „just for fun“. I´m real­ly proud about this guys. How is it with you? Tell me some­thing about your organz­sa­tion struc­tures. How may time spend you with XTERRA?

Flo­ri­an: Wir sind eine sehr kleine Struk­tur. Denis und ich (Flo­ri­an) arbeit­en ein Jahr lang an der Vor­bere­itung der Ver­anstal­tung. Denis arbeit­et nach seinem Arbeit­stag am XTERRA. Für mich ist XTERRA ein echter Teil mein­er Arbeit. Unter uns haben wir ein Team von 15 Man­agern, die sehr engagiert sind. Sie ver­wal­ten wichtige Funk­tio­nen am Ren­ntag. Dann sind da noch all die Frei­willi­gen. Ins­ge­samt wer­den wir während des XTERRA Bel­gien-Tages mehr als 240 Frei­willige sein.

Benno: Do you get great sup­port from the region, the city?

Flo­ri­an: Yes we have the sup­port of the region and the city. The city of Namur has under­stood that sport and XTERRA brings dynamism and is very pos­i­tive for the region. Our race brings eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits for the city. In total, with our 4 events of the week­end, it is 2000 peo­ple who will par­tic­i­pate.

Ben­no: What’s the news this year?

Flo­ri­an: We want to attract new ath­letes on the XTERRA triathlon. We orga­nize a trail on Fri­day evening but also a moun­tain bike ride that takes the XTERRA route. We are also orga­niz­ing a med­ical con­fer­ence. It will address themes relat­ed to triathlon.

Thank you, dear Flo­ri­an – see you. Tomor­row the adven­ture XTERRA Bel­gium starts for the O-SEE team.