DAWSON CITY – While this year’s Fulda Challenge was the 14th annual event, organizer Holger Bergold recalls a 15th, which was a trial run the year before.

With minor changes in route and list of events, the German tire company has been pleased to continue this media sports event ever since. Usually though, it’s held in mid-winter and at much colder temperatures than the teams faced this year.

Seated in one of the rented Equinox SUVs parked to block Princess Street on the evening of Nov. 19, Bergold lit a cigar and explained that the change was to put the marketing videos that are created from the events more in line with when European customers normally think about putting on snow tires.

“This was the latest that we could do it for winter tire sales, and the earliest (in my opinion) for the weather.”

He’s thinking it might not have been the best choice in terms of drama and settings.

“We miss the ice,” said Bergold. “We miss the real cold temperatures. We don’t get to go on the rivers and lakes. That makes all the difference.”

The teams normally do something out on the Yukon River ice bridge in Dawson, but the ice had only stopped moving a day or two before they arrived, so that was out.

When they went to do the snowshoe race on the Moose Mountain ski hill, there really wasn’t enough snow, so they ran the trails leading from the television and cell towers up to the Dome instead.

There had to be little adjustments to events all through the five days of the Challenge.

It all began in Whitehorse on Nov. 15 with three events including a biathlon on Grey Mountain and a blind drive at Sundog. The next day saw teams in Carcross doing a skidoo parcours and later something called fuel-break capability at the airport.

On the way north to the Klondike Nov. 17, they stopped at the Braeburn airstrip to play car broomball. Overnighting in Dawson, they headed to the Arctic Circle and a marathon run.

Teams got back to Dawson the next day in time to get their snowshoe event completed and by 5 o’clock they had two blocks of 3rd Avenue cordoned off for their reverse obstacle course run, which got progressively more difficult to perform as the daylight disappeared during the two hours it took to do the ten runs.

Of course, it’s all a little less extreme this year than it usually is.

“To be honest, “ Bergold said with a chuckle, “it’s much nicer to work in a decent temperature at -5 C. Especially the camera men are happy. At -40 with photographic equipment you really go to the limits of the equipment. They break and the LCD monitors don’t show anymore – they simply give up.”

There were five teams in the games this time – none from Canada or the territory. They were from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. As usual there was some media celebrities, sports stars and some gifted amateurs.

Ten media people covered the event for the European sports press.

“Dawson City is always a draw,” Bergold says. “People like to come here, to step back in history. It’s very special. They also like the Dempster Highway. It was so spectacular. It’s one of those dream roads that draws as well in summer as in winter.

“A lot of German speaking Europeans just love being here, taking a motorhome, and going up on all these dream roads,” said Bergold.

“It’s the wide open space that you have up here and that’s what really draws tourists as well as companies like Fulda, because they not only show how their tires work and how the cars work, they put, as well, adventure around their, in the end, boring material.”