extreme sports

Núria Picas was born in Manresa, in central Catalonia, 39 years ago. She considers herself a “daughter of the Montserrat mountain”, where her parents brought her climbing as a child. Since she was little she established a strong bond with nature and is now the ‘number 1’ woman in mountain trail running. Last year she won the Ultra Trail World Tour, a competition with ten races (twelve this year), of at least 100 kilometres each. Last season, Picas ran four of these races winning three times and coming runner-up in the fourth. In 2015, however, her “main goal” goes beyond the running world. She is on cloud nine with her new challenge and will soon be literally closer than ever to the clouds: in the spring she is going to attempt to climb an 8,000-metre peak in the Himalayas.

Two Catalan drivers made history this weekend at the end of the Dakar Rally 2015. Motorbike rider Marc Coma won his fifth Dakar, equalling the five titles of French drivers Cyril Neveu and Cyril Despres. Coma has become the second driver with the most triumphs in the category, just one victory less than Frenchman Stéphane Peterhansel. Rider Laia Sanz finished ninth, the best position for a woman of all time. In addition, Catalonia had a large representation in this edition, with racers in all four categories, especially in motorbikes. Of the 25 Catalan racers that started the Rally on the 4^th of January, almost half made it to Buenos Aires last Saturday, after covering 9,000 kilometres in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. 

The Andorra-la Seu d’Urgell Airport kicked off its public and commercial activities on Thursday, and is able to host aircraft of up to 40 seats. The old La Seu d’Urgell’s airfield, in the middle of a Pyrenean valley and only 15km away from Andorra, has been updated to go beyond being a facility merely used by recreational light aircraft. From now on, small commercial airliners, charter flights and air taxis will be able to operate from this mountain airport very close to Catalonia’s and Andorra’s main ski resorts. The new facilities will be managed by the Catalan Government and Andorra, which will meet half of its operational costs. The Catalan Executive is currently negotiating with 8 companies that may be interested in flying from the airport. Furthermore, the permits needed to host flights from outside the Schengen Area are expected to be granted by the Spanish authorities during 2015.

On Friday early morning the 10km metro tunnel of Barcelona that links Universitat and Gorg stations became the track of the second edition of Discovery Underground. This is the only urban underground race in the world going through the centre of big cities and it is an original idea of the Spanish television channel Discovery MAX. 300 men and women with background stories that assimilate the channel's premise "ordinary people living extraordinary experiences" ran for about 1.45h, with the first two people arriving at the minute 39. 2014 Discovery Underground Barcelona marks the beginning of the celebrations of the 90th anniversary of the Metro of Barcelona.

Between Friday 30th May and Sunday 1st June, Lleida-Alguaire Airport will play host to the first ever European race in the Air Race F1 competition , a long-established American flying competition. The event, called the Lleida Air Challenge, will also include a race of the Spanish aerobatic flying championship and other aeronautical activities. Practice started on Wednesday but the actual races will start on Friday and end on Sunday with the Air Race F1 event. 8 aircraft fly at 10-15 metres above ground level at 400km/h. The CEO of Air Race F1, Jeff Zaltman, said that he wants the competition to grow in Europe and Catalonia to act as its base for operations.

5 Major Catalan ski resorts launch their season this weekend, on the 23^rd and the 24^th of November: La Molina, Vall de Núria, Vallter, Masella and Baqueira Beret. Thanks to the weather of these past few days, the resorts have been able to advance their opening a week earlier than initially planned. Indeed, the snowfalls have been exceptional for this time of year, ranging between 30 and 100 centimetres. Vallter was the luckiest resort with a snow thickness varying between 90 and 100 centimetres. They will be launching their new season with a party and a new range of mountain activities for all snow sports fans. The final four Catalan resorts are expected to open within the next 10 days.

The rain that fell on the Catalan capital did not tarnish the first X-Games held in Barcelona, although it did cause a headache for the organisers, who had to juggle with competition schedules and even cancel the RallyCross and Moto X Freestyle competitions. 114,600 people attended the event in total, crowding out the venues in which the different competitions were held.

The Catalan capital is ready to celebrate the first X-Games on European soil. The event, which is being held from May 16th to the 19th, is expected to host 120,000 spectators that will generate an income of 40 million euros for the city of Barcelona. Among international stars like stunt performer Travis Pastrana, the BMX rider Kevin Robinson or the skater Paul Rodríguez, toplevel Catalan stars like rally competitor Nani Roma or the Moto X riders Laia Sanz and Edgar Torronteres will also be present.

The Pyrenees of Lleida are one of the main areas in Catalonia for adventure sports and the season officially kicks off this week, once the snow sports are about to end their season. Now begins the time for rafting, canyoning, horse-riding excursions, paragliding, mountain bike rides and hiking, which are among the most popular sports. In the last year, the number of companies working within these activities in the Province of Lleida has increased by 20%, reaching more than 200 enterprises. The sector has set the objective of reaching 625,000 services in 2013, similar to that of the last few years. However, they are concerned that the economic crisis and the VAT increase imposed by the Spanish Government might reduce the number of clients.