Batavierenrace

The Batavierenrace ( Batavierrennen ) with approximately 7,500 participating students from the largest relay race in the world. In 25 steps around 185 km between Nijmegen and Enschede are stored. In the evening, held in Enschede always the biggest Dutch students hard place: the Batavierenfeest.

The route starts at the sports center of the Radboud University Nijmegen, then goes through Germany, Achterhoek, the city center of Enschede and ends on the campus of the University of Twente.

The race is organized by students in Nijmegen and Enschede every year. At the weekend they are supported by about 500 volunteers.

The race

The Batavierenrace is divided into 25 sections, which vary in length from 3.4 km to 11.9 km. After the opening of the race in Nijmegen is started at midnight. Large parts of the race find therefore also take place at night.

Every runner has a camisole to serving as a squadron floor. In this camisole a chip incorporated with the time can be measured. You can track up to date on the internet the race and the times through this chip even. Every runner has a companion on the bike with him. This pet must also have the way.

There are six different groups in order to register the time better. In addition, there are three points at which the race is restarted: in Dinxperlo (from 6:30 bis 8:00 clock ), Barchem (11:00 bis 12:30 clock ) and on the Oude Markt Enschede (17:00 -17:20 clock ). Each team has about a night, morning and lunch team.

The finale is on the runway at the University of Twente. Most teams will use their best runners. At 17:30 expect thousands of spectators, the runners on campus.

The teams are completely different and come from all over the Netherlands ( and partially also from abroad). There are friends teams, sororities, sports associations, etc. What is important is not the university rankings in which argue the various universities against each other.

History

The Batavierenrace there since 1973. Students from Nijmegen had seen a similar relay race in Sweden and wanted to introduce something in the Netherlands. In the first year the race went from Nijmegen to Rotterdam. Hence the name comes: the Batavians were a Germanic tribe that lived in the Roman period. But there were too many problems in Rotterdam with the infrastructure, so you ran the race a year later to Enschede. The route from 1974 was not changed since then.