During the last weekend of April, the 40th Batavierenrace, an annual student relay race over 172 km, was organized in the Netherlands. Wageningen University Team was the overall winner, completing the whole track in 10 hours and 29 minutes, followed by the teams of the University of Eindhoven and the University of Twente. The Impalas from England were the fastest international team. 

 

This year, 348 teams took part in the 40th Batavierenrace with a total of 8.509 participants. In total, 14 international teams took part from Germany, Slovenia and Great Britain. With 8.509 participants the Batavierenrace broke her own world record “most participants in a relay race” and thus deserves a new entry in the Guinness World Records Book. The organization looks back on a very successful jubilee edition, where sports and fun were combined in a wonderful way. Hester de Vries, international officer of the Dutch Students Sports Association and one of the race officials of the Batavierenrace, stated: “It was a great race with no major challenges for us during the race. With this amount of participants and volunteers it is amazing to see how everything goes so smoothly and everyone is enjoying the race with their team!” 

 

The Batavierenrace is an annual student relay race and exists since 1973. In total, 350 teams can participate in the Batavierenrace. With 25 participants per team, the number of participants is around 8.500 per year. With this number of participants, the Batavierenrace is mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records with “most participants in a relay race”. The route is divided into 25 stages, of which 17 are men’s and 8 are women’s stages. The length of these stages varies from 2.9 to 11.2 km, with the entire route of the Batavierenrace covering 172 km. 

 

The Batavierenrace is annually organized by students from different Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. The organization takes up to a year and with the help of several committees (former students) in that period and the 600 volunteers during the event itself it is the greatest annual students sport event in the Netherlands. 

 

More information: www.batavierenrace.nl