Monday morning, the 26th of July, somewhere around eleven o’clock, Baglio San Pietro and the whole of Nicosia revives… The salamanders reappear on the Baglio square, the people dare to walk on the streets again and the Sicilians go back to their dolce far niente.

The people found their rest again after 3 days of watching strange people rushing, running, biking, drinking, shouting and singing. The reason for the lack of rest was the Trinakrian Trail that whirled as a tornado over Nicosia and its surroundings…
It is difficult to explain the 4 stages of the Trail, what we will try to do is give you short report of the 3 days adventure.

The first stage started and ended in Nicosia city. A team-run trough the narrow streets and stairs made it harder than expected. The one hour race ended in a draw between Melsele and Huldenberg, Catania ended third.

The Salso river stage was probably the hardest, roughest and toughest. No team had ever passed the 7,5km Salso River on a race. The Catania team took a good start, but it was team Huldenberg that ended first. Melsele played it tactical and shared the coins with the Huldenberg team.



Conditionally the Melsele team impressed on the climb to Sperlinga. They started with advance on the search for the coins. Huldenberg started second and Catania started as third. After one hour all the hidden coins were divided. Melsele 10 coins, Huldenberg 6 coins.



The race had an ending it needed. After 3 stages the Team from Melsele had a gap on the Huldenberg Team. But the final stage had to decide who could buy the stone the closest to the sun. Due to a communication error Melsele lost seven minutes. And with a seven minutes advance Huldenberg started for the last run. With an unbelievable run on the Sambughetti Mountain Melsele and Huldenberg arrived almost together on the top. But Huldenberg robbed most of the coins.

Our president counted the coins and revealed that team Huldenberg had the most coins, Melsele was second and Team Catania third. One of the Huldenberg participants stood on the largest stone and reached for the sun and victory…




Gert, Jurgen, Karel, Bart, Jan, Luk, Stef, Tom, Roberto, Eugenio, Hartwig and Mariella thanks a lot for your participation, interest, perseverance and fun under the hot sun and clear moon. Luigi and the staff of the Baglio thanks for your Sicilian food, Peroni’s and generous hospitality. We had an unforgettable stay in Nicosia. For us Nicosia is in Sicily and not in some other small town in Cyprus…
Greetings

Only just a few days to go. We can give you our program. Beware for some small changes.

Friday, 23th of July
15.30u : check -inn Baglio San Pietro
17.00 u : Start Trinakrian Trial 2010 : centre of Nicosia :
STAGE 1 : ”Città di Nicosia”
21.00u : supper

Saturday, 24th of July
8.00 u : STAGE 2 : “Passagio fiume Salso”
12.00u : snack + siesta
16.00u : STAGE 3 : “Arrampicata a Sperlinga”
21.00u : supper

Sunday, 25th of July
10.00u -12.00u STAGE 4 Finale : “ Il Corso di Sole a Sambughetti”
17.00u : Siesta
21.00u : Awards and supper

How on earth do we get the closest to the sun, or can we stand on the largest stone?

Well, again it is simple, almost ridiculous … You can buy the largest stone! Not with common euros, (although it would be a major help to us…) but with Trinakrian coins. The team with the most coins, can buy the largest stone and wins the Trinakrian trial 2010. The picture you see is a replica of the original “Corso Trinakria Moneta”. This an example of the coins you can pay with on the top of the Sambughetti.


How can you earn these coins could be a second question. You can figure the answer out by yourself. The coins are hidden on the track. During the three day competition you will have to find as much coins as possible. The richest team, and now I’m repeating myself, can buy the largest stone.

What on earth are we going to do in the centre of Sicily?

Well, it is quite simple. We will replay the original Trinakrian Trail or “Percorso Trinakria” from the middle of 18th century. For the first time after 360 years there will be a new Trinakrian Trail. This time not only with the two teams from Nicosia, but with four international teams.

You could say that we updated the original, that we made a 2010 version. We kept the baseline. We only adjusted it, made it more 2010. We use the equipment that is available at this moment to achieve the goal that the people in the 18th century tried to achieve.

That goal stays the same as 360 years ago; “to get as close to the sun as possible”. The team who stands on the largest stone on the Sambughetti mountain wins the Trinakrian Trial 2010.

Question number 2 : Why on earth do they use such an unpronounceable name for their event?

Well, we can’t help it, but we have nothing to do with it. In our search for a challenge we found the story of an old trail trough the province of Enna. The trail already existed for ages; only the name is slightly different. We named our event the Trinakrian Trial, although the original was named “Percorso Trinakria” or Trinakrian Trail (watch the small change between the a end i in the word trial, it isn’t very creative, we know!).

So as you can read in the document you can put the blame on the Italians in the 18th century. They are responsible for the unpronounceable name.

We get a lot of questions these days. We experience a sense of curiosity, even anxiety… Following days and weeks we will try to give some answers to these questions.

First answer we would like to respond to is: Why on earth do we make this blog in English?

We were looking for a language that both teams, Italians and Belgians, could understand. The truth is that our Italian is as bad as the Italian competitors their Dutch. Except for the swearing and dirty words our Italian won’t go further then spaghetti and testarossa. Therefore we decided to use a language we all know, more or less…
It will not be your standard BBC English, although we learned most of it by watching television. So excuse us if our English reads a bit bizarre (Google translator sometimes moves in mysterious ways!). It is the best we can do…