Wageningen participants in Batavieren Race: WUR university team and Tartletos team. Photo Tartletos ‘The Bata is supposed to be somewhat chaotic, but this year was worse than others’, says team leader Ties van Zandbrink on Monday afternoon. ‘The outcome has yet to be confirmed, but it is already obvious that Groningen won. We are fairly certain of a second or third place.’
The Batavieren Race is made up of twenty-five legs from Nijmegen to Enschede, Van Zandbrink explains somewhat rhetorically. ‘Nine legs has students running from Nijmegen to Ulft during the night, followed by a restart, after which the teams run from Ulft to Barchem in eight legs. There, another restart marks the start of the afternoon session of eight legs to the final destination, Enschede. Out of these 25 legs, sixteen are so-called men’s legs, and nine are women’s legs. After the race, there is a big student party in Enschede on Twente University campus.’
Results
The race did not go nearly as smoothly as Van Zandbrink described it. ‘We had two incidents this year. One person in the organizing team became unwell, and two vehicles crashed along the route, which meant several legs had to be cancelled. The final three morning legs and one afternoon leg were excluded from the ranking of university teams.’
The extra chaos also means the results have yet to be confirmed. ‘Unfortunately this means the podium ceremony, which is normally held during the party, was not conducted as normal, but we understand that this edition of the race takes a little longer than normal’, Van Zandbrink comments.
The WUR students were, however, able to round off the event during the party. ‘In spite of the uncertainty surrounding the results, we celebrated our second place. Whether our celebration was justified remains to be seen, but we had a great day nonetheless.’
Fast females
Wageningen generally performs well during the Bata. ‘We came in second last year, and third the year before. In 2012, we even made it to first place. Quite a feat for a relatively small university.’
‘The women’s legs are instrumental in our success’, Van Zandbrink reveals. ‘WUR dominated eight out of nine female legs. A WUR-runner also came in first during the final leg, which ends on the Enschede campus’ athletics track. That was quite a moment. We even had a woman run a men’s leg, as she outran the men.’
