Horizons Sports • Posts • Page 21 of 28

Most people are so happy to buy a good bike that they forget about a very important part of buying a cycle – your bike mechanic. Sooner or later you will need one unless you maintain your bike yourself. If you buy from a store, ensure they have a repair/maintenance wing. Stores are more partial to fixing bikes they sell – especially in Europe with the owner/operator running the bike shop. If you buy online than its up to you to find a trusty bike mechanic.

The more you ride – especially on badly paved roads full of holes and bumps – the higher the chance that screws will get loose and you will start hearing noises…..hello mechanic. The older the bike, over 20,000 kilometers , the more often you will need assistance – not road side - but in between rides – you will get to know your mechanic well. He/she will try to sell you a new bike – maybe a good idea - depending on your finances.- as the repair costs mount.

Always ask for an estimate before the work is done. You will be surprised by how many riders are so eager to get back on the saddle they forget basic economic sense and pay whatever – hey I am riding again – who cares about the bill – until the time you feel “had”. Most riders assume the mechanic will do a good job and will have done what they were supposed to do. A good mechanic will take time to explain what has been done and give you some tips on what you need to watch out for. If you don’t feel that the price is right or the bike is performing– bring it up with the store – check out other stores/ mechanics – look for online reviews… Your enjoyment and safety are at risk.

Have a great ride!

The Greatest of the Outdoor Show 2018 Explore the biggest Outdoor Show in the world. We take you to all the nooks and crannies to discover what is new. From climbing to camping to garments to shoes to SUP and canoes with bouldering and slack line competitions and the latest Outdoor social media trends. The show has it all. See the best stories by HorizonSports. Bloodwise Blenheim Palace Triathlon 2018 Taking place against the stunning backdrop of Blenheim Palace estate, the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, this iconic triathlon is the traditional season opener and the second-biggest event in the UK, with thousands of enthusiasts, celebrities and world-class elites taking on the scenic and historic course. Rock The Parks Season 1 Episode 25: Best of bears

Jack and Colton have met a lot of animals during their hikes in the parks. Their favorite is definitely the bear and they have met quite a few. Adidas Infinite Trails World Championship 2018 74 teams and 98 individual runners took part in the Adidas INFINITE TRAILS World Championships Prologue in Gastein/SalzburgerLand. More than 20 countries were represented and the runners swarmed across the valley and up the mountain side despite inclement weather from start to finish. The race was forced to be shortened as at the peak of Stubnerkogel mountain, the temperature dropped to nearly freezing and the winds gusted mercilessly.

Adventure Academy Sweden 2018 Hellweek

Our 20 students are in the north of Sweden for the hellweek. With almost no food, no information about what will happen, let's see how they will handle the challenge.

Outdoor Show - Testing Top 37

The 13th OutDoor Industry Award, goes to 37 new and innovative products out of 250 submitted. The jury decides which products represent true innovation and have the potential to take a market segment to the next level.The top Eleven products for innovation - receive a Gold-Award. Meet the jury and see the selected products in this informative and entertaining report.

Swansea Triathlon 2018

The Swansea Triathlon takes place in Wales’s second city and offers an exciting sprint distance race for elite and age-group athletes. This year’s event features the up and coming elite star Alex Matchett, while Rugby legend Shane Williams also takes on the city centre course. Six year old Imogen Ashwell-Lewis, who has cerebral palsy, also takes on the challenge with her team of supporters, roared on by the crowds who turn out for this evening event.

Xterra Offroad Triathlon Cyprus 2018

Let's make a stop in Cyprus – one of the largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Famous for its blue waters, volcanic like trails and vistas of exceptional beauty, it’s the perfect destination for an XTERRA race. The event saw the athletes take on a 1.5km sea swim, followed by 32km mountain biking and they finished with a testing 10km trail run.

Marathon Des Sables 2018

One of the most famous Ultra Trail appointments and the original six-stage race across 250km of Sahara. A true test of your Spirit as sand, heat and muscle failure dog the male and female runners as they try to reach their destination and complete the course together with their buddies. An epic desert adventure worth watching!

Wellness Bazaar - Best of Rimini Wellness

We get sweaty and try out the fitness machines in the biggest wellness festival in the world. Check out everything from dozens of different fitness and Yoga classes with some of the world’s best fitness instructors to hard bodies and healthy nutrition. You will want to put on your spandex when watching this!

XTerra Greece 2018

The Greek capital of Athens hosted the 6th XTERRA Greece Offroad Triathlon Championship.The route consisted of 1500m swimming in the bay of Vouliagmeni, 30km of mountain biking followed by a 10km mountainous run.

Redemption

An amazing film about James Pearson, one of the world’s best trad climbers. This is a controversial climbing story. James faces his demons after returning home to confront the UK climbing community and seek redemption. A true climbing story that shook the UK .

Madeira Island Ultra Trail & Ultra Trail Mont Fuji

Discover the incredible terrain and Ultra trail runners at opposite ends of the earth. Follow the 115 km race across the mountains of the Portuguese Atlantic island of Madeira to the 170 km race around Mount Fuji, Japan. The Ultra trail races are truly breathtaking!

Geneva Marathon

Explore the wonderful city and Swiss surroundings of Geneva with thousands of runners from more than 120 locations in this15th edition of the marathon. Set at the foot of the Alps along lake Geneva, runners meander across the countryside in eight different races finishing up in the heart of delightful Geneva.

ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World Series 2018, Isles of Scilly

The 2018 ÖTILLÖ Isles of Scilly World Series turned out to be a very exciting affair all the way to the bitter end. This third edition of the race had the top teams in each class dog-fighting all the way to the finish line. The 38 kilometres long course is a true test, alternating technical trail running with long, challenging stretches of open-water swimming.

Rock the parks Season 1 Episode 23 Best of Wildlife

We bring you the best of the national parks adventures experienced by our two heroes Jack and Colton. They focus on the most memorable encounters with bison, whales, bears, alligators, bats and other wild inhabitants of the most famous national parks in the US.

Watch the videos

Tout là-haut” by Serge Hazanavicius was the first French feature length movie in twenty years focused on free-riding and was screened at the Trento Film Festival. It is about a young “crazy” snowboarder who dreams about going to Everest and snowboarding down the so-called “Holbein Corridor”. The movie is also a tribute to Marco Sifreddi a young snowboarder who lived in Chamonix and died trying to snowboard down Mt. Everest

After the screening, the director shared his experience in making the film, which is going to be shown in 300+ cinemas, but has yet to come to many cinemas worldwide .

Set mainly in and around Chamonix, hometown of the director, and Monte Bianco, the story moves to Nepal and then the North Face of Everest (though shot on the Indian side, with some scenes in Europe, since the crew couldn’t actually go up to 6000 meters of altitude). One of the reasons Tout là-haut was made now was thanks to the new technologies, especially the small cameras, and the fact that only a limited crew was needed to film the extreme action scenes in the forest and close to the cliff faces. The film had countless hair-raising action scenes that highlighted mountain backdrops that were stunning and perilous at same time.

Hazanavicious explained that too many movies about mountains were made by people who don’t know mountains and portray too much suffering—whereas people from mountains need to know the rules of narration—to achieve a good balance, where doing stupid things on skis could be entertaining in a movie.

The film involved actors from different countries who were all enthusiastic about the project, but did not actually ski in the film.The lead actor is the very well known French comedian, Kev Adams, who started on stage at 18 and has a good energy on screen and also helped in getting funding for the film. Bernard de la Pierre from Chamonix is also involved in the mountain scenes. The French actress who plays the wife of the older guide is also in the film “Drei Zinnen” which takes place in the Sextner Dolomites

The film takes place in France and Italy in the mountains the director knows. When asked if he has worked in the mountains as an actor, he replied that he has played a doctor twice and that it is not often they make movies like this in France because usually the films talk about women.

The movie took 6 years to make, due to financing requirements, weather and snow conditions. The director was asked if he went to Everest. he said they went to the North Face in order to finish writing the film, but it was impossible to shoot the film there, It was not possible to go to 6300 meters with the whole crew. They found a location in Northern India, Ladakh at around 4500-5000 meters that looked similar to Everest. While no one has yet skied or snowboarded down the mountain, it is just a matter of time before it will be done and then a page will be turned in making the impossible possible as Reinhold Messner famously said.

Watch the most incredible variety of nature sports, wellness and films on HorizonSports.TV! https://horizonsports.tv/home

by Laurence F. Hopper

I did not realize thald do. After all, I walked a couple of kilometers every day and ran 7km once a week, played soccer or tennis once a week and cycled around three hours on weekends. My diet was balanced, although I ate heavy meals at dinner and never left the table unless I was full. Despite my exercise regime, I had a bit of a belly —though I felt good. I thought I looked good.

My cycle buddies all weighed much less than me. They would shoot up the hill and I was always lagging behind. They all said I weighed too much and that was why I had a hard time going uphill. The wife’s comments about my love handles did not help. It was at that moment that I realised I needed to do something.

If you want to feel good, then whatever exercise you can do is fine. But if you want to lose some weight, even if you are not overweight, then what you are already doing is not enough. You need to change your diet and increase your exercise (burn more calories).

What I decided to do was not radical. I did not stop eating or drinking anything in particular. I did not take up a strange sport or start some activity I never did before. All I did was eat more fruits and vegetables and exercise more. I increased my cycling to two times a week from one time a week and made the weekend ride longer. I started eating more vegetables and drinking less beer, although I did drink one whenever I felt like it. Same with alcohol in general – glass of wine and sometimes a bit of hard liquor. I increased my walking during the week to about three kilometers a day by walking to and from work and increased my cycling on weekends to over three hours. I didn’t see this as a burden.

Losing weight felt good. I needed another hole on my belt to hold my pants up on a skinny waist – my clothes all felt baggy and looked baggy on a slimmer frame. I am more energetic and feel better – a spring in my step

This is the key to success. You can either exercise a lot more or eat a lot less or strike a balance between the two which is what I did. But it needs to be done over time and worked into your daily routine to be sustainable over the long term or you risk going back to your original weight.

The key was to stuff myself with vegetables – salad with olive oil and mixed with all kinds of vegetables to make it taste better– and soups, hummus. Meat and steaks will not make you fat or grow a belly, so that is fine. Drink a lot of water to feel full.

I increased my walking during the week to about five kilometers a day by walking to and from work and increased my cycling. Tennis and soccer will not make a big difference in weight. A glass of wine a day will not make a difference either. Cycling is great since you can take a 3 hour ride and burn around 800 calories per hour going at a good pace, so that in three hours you can burn around 2400 calories which is around 3 pounds. But then stick to the raw vegetable/ fruit / meat diet so that you don’t regain all the weight.

HORIZONSPORTS.TV, the world’s only Nature Sports & Wellness video platform has been selected as Official Media Partner by the Ultra Trail World Tour (UTWT). All twenty-one UTWT races on six continents will be available for viewing anywhere and anytime in the world through the HorizonSports.TV, smart phone, APP and browser as well as on Smart TVs, reaching over 200.000 unique viewers. All participants will receive a discounted subscription to HorizonSports.TV so that they can easily enjoy watching all the UTWT races whenever they want.

Laurence Fox Hopper, HorizonSports.TV CEO said: “We are thrilled to be the Official Media Partner of the Ultra Trail World Tour and to be able to showcase some of the most amazing Ultra Trails in the world such as the UTMB, the Marathon des Sables, the Western States 100… ”

Marie Sammons, Ultra Trail World Tour Director added, “HorizonSports.TV is a very good way for us to reach a much larger audience and be able to work together to extend and enhance the sports popularity worldwide”.

About HORIZONSPORTS.TV

HorizonSports.TV is the only nature sports & wellness subscriber video on demand (SVOD) platform that caters to people who hike, run, cycle, love mountains, want to be healthy and more active in nature with over 200,000 unique viewers per month through a combination of SVOD platform, Android / Apple App, and through smart TVs. HorizonSports.TV aggregates and produces the best inspiring video content from the top outdoor, sports events, lifestyle and adventure TV producers with a balance of sports and Wellness premium programming available for unlimited on demand, Live sports and streaming TV viewing.

About UTWT ®

The Ultra-Trail®World Tour is the Unique Series of the most emblematic Trail running and ultra-distances races in the World. It illustrates the wide diversity that Trail Running represents : with the narrow and steep paths in the Alps, the hot Californian trails, the hundred steps in Australia, beaches in HK, the dunes in Morocco…. On all continents, UTWT gives that unique opportunity for all runners participating in a minimum of 2 races of the calendar to get a ranking among the Top International Elite Runners. While being fundamentally different, the Ultra-Trail®World Tour races have common values, which they are proud to share and promote. Ethics, equity in sports, self-respect, respect for others, for the environment.

Contact:

HorizonSports.TV : Philippe Deleplace (philippe@horizonsports.com)

https://horizonsports.tv/

UTWT : Marie Sammons (marie.sammons@ultratrailworldtour.com )

https://www.ultratrail-worldtour.com/

The Amazing Trento Film Festival

There is so much going on all at once that you have to be really organised and plan ahead especially if you want to see the top films, which sell out quickly. Besides films, there are panel discussions, book presentations, films, cultural events, culinary rendez-vous, kids programmes and a lot more. HorizonSportsTV interviewed Sergio Fant, the programming director of the festival, who explains the mission of the annual event and how it continues to be the “mother of all mountain film festivals in the world” – and the first one – going strong in its 66th edition. I have never seen so many of the world’s top climbers and film producers all in one place!

The Trento Film Festival showcased some 130 films, 25 competing for the coveted “genziana” d’oro or argento prizes, and several premieres of feature films, including “Tout là-haut” by Serge Hazanavicius, “Edie” by Simon Hunter, “Holy Mountain” by Reinhold Messner and “Resina” by Renzo Carbonera. “Mountain” by Jennifer Peedom, was the unanimous choice of the public. Beautifully filmed, narrated by Willem DeFoe, and accompanied by the music of the Canberra chamber orchestra, the movie traversed the mountains and myths of mountains of the world, not leaving out the dangers and death that faced those who dared to challenge the heights.

A key ingredient in the films was the stories that were being told. Each film shared a story, some portrayed the suffering and struggle of climbers and alpinists to reach the top—or maybe not… As Reihold Messner said, “it’s not about reaching the top – it’s about the journey up “.

Go on your own or with your family and friends. Trento is a delightful and fun town and the festival shows the mountains as magical and alive . Watch the interview and all the top mountain film clips on HorizonSportsTV https://horizonsports.tv/video?mediaId=VAr24PFc

See you next year at the Trento Film Festival – plan on it!

by: Laurence F. Hopper & Julia Culver