Join in in the time trial series for the TOUR-Stoppomat-Challenge: All participants who complete at least four of the six routes between 1 May and 30 September 2008 and document their times will be entered into a prize draw:
- a team starting place for two people for the TOUR-Trans-Austria 2009
- a carbon wheelset from Shimano worth 1,000 euros
- Ten Continental "Grand Prix Attack & Force" tyre sets worth 79.95 euros each
Current intermediate results and ranking overviews are available online here, the best times in the various ranking categories will be published in TOUR after the end of the series.
The locations:
- Hirschhorn (approx. 8.3 km, 280 metres in altitude)
69434 Hirschhorn am Neckar, Hainbrunnerstraße
- Höchsten (8.2 km, 360 metres in altitude)
88693 Deggenhausertal (Urnau), Schönemühle car park
Info: Roland.Hecht@gmx.de
- Kalmit (approx. 8.1 km, 500 metres in altitude)
67487 Maikammer (Alstweiler), leaving the town in a westerly direction on Alstweiler Straße
- Königstuhl (approx. 5.3 km, 320 metres in altitude)
69151 Neckargemünd (Waldhilsbach), heading north on Heidelberger-Straße, at the end of the town
- Pfullingen (approx. 4.3 km, 270 metres in altitude)
72805 Lichtenstein (Unterhausen) in southern direction, Gießsteinsteige/Buchhalde on the right-hand side
Info: info@vsv-votteler.de
- Hoher Meißner (approx. 7.8 km, 480 metres in altitude)
37290 Meißner (Abterode), town centre
Detailed information on the routes as well as elevation profiles, maps and route planners are available on the Internet
HOW IT ALL BEGAN...
Clack. Somewhere inside the yellow housing, a stamp stamps the time to the second onto the card - the race begins. Race? The scenery is sparse. There are no spectators, no barriers, no loudspeakers anywhere. There's just the road, the mountain - and the ticking clock in your head signalling: Now's the time! The incentive is considerable, as the burning thighs signal after just a few hundred metres. After all, after a good eight kilometres at the end of the climb, another stamp is waiting to print a second time on the paper and prove your fitness. Or the full extent of your misery, as the case may be. The idea is as simple as it is captivating: take a nice mountain route, not too long and not too difficult, install a timing system and you have a permanent race track on which anyone can test their form at any time, compete with mates or race against the clock on their own. It's one of those ideas that pop into your head after a training session, preferably over a nice beer, and settle there: you should ...
Advertising for the local mountain
This is what happened to Roland Hecht and Andreas Reinhardt when they were training on Mallorca three years ago. After the cycle tour, the two members of the RSV Seerose in Friedrichshafen alternately looked out to sea and into their glasses of wheat and pondered to themselves: The local cycling club had been bobbing along for some time with little motivation and was in desperate need of a revitalisation. The cyclists from Lake Constance always looked enviously over to neighbouring Austria: The Pfänder, Bregenz's local mountain, was constantly attracting racing cyclists; the Höchsten, on the other hand, the hardly less attractive local mountain of Friedrichshafen, was only known to insiders. But what to do? Hecht and Reinhardt pondered advertising measures - but the brilliant idea was missing.
Back home, the two met their club members Lutz Geisler and Sabine Reich, who had just been cycling in Switzerland and had learnt about the "Swiss Trophy" there: a series of mountain time trials during the summer on changing routes, documented using mobile timing systems that remain at one location for several weeks and then move on to the next route.
"That was the idea," says Roland Hecht and makes no secret of where the suggestion came from, "but we wanted it to be a permanently installed system at the highest point." The route was the least of the problems. It was quickly finalised. But then Hecht and his club colleagues started researching, looking for manufacturers of suitable systems and found nothing. When he described the idea to his colleagues - engineers at Zahnradfabrik Friedrichshafen - they were immediately fired up, but put a dry stop to Hecht's enthusiasm with their cost estimate: "20,000 euros," recalls Hecht, "that was out of the question for our small club."
So the amateur cyclists started tinkering. The most important point: timekeeping. Because the whole idea stands or falls with the precise documentation of the cycling time. The more concrete the project became, the more things had to be considered. There were systems for indoor time documentation, but no devices for outdoors. So a weatherproof construction had to be found, the power supply for the start and finish system had to be clarified, the start house had to be designed and built; once one task was completed, two new ones followed. In the meantime, the project at least got its name: When Roland Hecht strolled through the Eurobike trade fair in Friedrichshafen in autumn 2005, he discovered the "Tube-O-Mat" at the stand of tyre manufacturer Continental - a kind of cigarette machine for bicycle tubes that is hung up in bike shops to provide cyclists with replacement tubes outside opening hours. The "Tube-O-Mat" looked remarkably similar to the timing system currently under construction, so it wasn't far away from the "Stoppomat". Incidentally, Conti is now one of the sponsors of the project.
From one-off to series
The second central task in addition to the pure timekeeping: the preparation and presentation of the times ridden on the Internet - because this is a not inconsiderable attraction of the permanent time trial course: that every participant, provided they hand in their card with the printed time, can find themselves on the Internet and compare themselves with all the other Bergfexen in various rating categories according to age and gender. Hecht's friend Thomas Bischof, an amateur racing cyclist with a doctorate in mechanical engineering, came into play. He spent more than 500 hours of voluntary work programming the software and database that makes the virtual competition with other cyclists possible.
After many hard-working weekends, the Höchsten facility went into operation at the end of March 2006. Three weeks later, professional cyclist Steffen Wesemann did the honours, setting a strong benchmark time - and the place has been buzzing ever since. More than 4,400 times have now been documented. The Stoppomat has brought new attention to both Höchsten and RSV Seerose and has revitalised club life in the long term. Hecht and his helpers are now delighted to have around 30 new club members, and the average age at RSV Seerose has fallen from 56 to 40. The Stoppomat is a recurring topic in the local press, and in July 2006 and 2007 the "Seerosen" also organised races on the Höchsten, the proceeds of which they use to finance the construction and maintenance of their facility.
In the meantime, news of the Stoppomat has spread far and wide. Interested parties who also want to install a Stoppomat system have come forward in droves. After some initial hesitation, the Friedrichshafeners finally gave in, but are sticking to their principle: "We don't want the Stoppomat to be used commercially," says Roland Hecht. "The whole project is based on voluntary work, the use of the facility is and remains free of charge, nobody earns anything from it. And it should stay that way." However, the Stoppomat pioneers have now found suitable partners; the participating clubs cover the costs of around 5,000 euros per facility themselves, supported by local sponsors or tourist boards, who hope that this will also be an attractive attraction for their regions.
On 1 May 2008, the mountain time trial will go into series production: five more facilities (see above) are mainly located in southern Germany. In order to set up an exciting overall ranking that not only gives top-trained athletes a chance, software expert Thomas Bischof has devised a variation: The times are translated into a points system, whereby the average time of all those completing a route is set equal to 100. Those who are faster are rewarded with more points, those who are slower receive fewer. Series starters who complete several or all routes therefore have a real chance of competing against super-fast individual starters in the overall standings. With this in mind: Let's go!
