I enjoyed reading Brian Warner's post back in November about the
Munich 6-Day, so I figured I should share my recent Euro 6-day
experience...

After making several business trips to Stuttgart in the last 18
months, I finally managed to schedule one to catch the last day of the
Stuttgart 6-Day (or "Hofbrau 6-tage"), last Tuesday. I recruited 4
of my American coworkers (mostly cycling novices) to join me (none of
the Germans in the office seemed interested), and we drove through the
snow to get to the Schleyer Hall where the race is held. In contrast
to Brian, we only had a 30 minute drive to contend with.

We bought the cheap tickets (11 euros each), but as we were there
early, we were still able to snag a table in the track center beer
garden, right next to the track, in the back straight (beer garden
seats by the finish line are the most expensive). The hall is like a
small hockey stadium, with seating for just over 5000 people, and the
track is large by 6-day standards, at 285m (sorry Dale, its another
Schuermann design!), but that leaves plenty of room in the track
center for pit areas and beer gardens. Due to the length of the
track, the organizers decided a few years ago to introduce 3-man teams
for the 6-day. There were 12 teams in this years race, so 36 riders
total.

The evening got underway at 7.30, with team introductions a la Bloomer
Park. There were 6 all-German teams, a Swiss team, a Danish team, a
Czech team, and then some mixed teams: German/Swiss, Dutch/German,
German/Italian. The first race was a miss'n'out. I knew I was going
to be bringing some newbies with me, so I did try to prepare ahead of
time by using an online translator on the official Hofbrau 6-tage
website but after I got this result for miss'n'out, I decided to just
try and explain things on the fly:

"CREW-ELIMINATION-DRIVE According to the principle "the latter bite
the dogs" must after each round at this time the letztplatzierte crew
separate. And the combat judges at the goal line pay attention only
here exeptionally to the rear wheel. The two last remaining teams
decide in conclusion-kept in track on the winner."

After the miss'n'out came the first of three "6x6" races. This was
basically a 36 lap points race, with sprints every 6 laps, with only
one rider from each team in the race. Interestingly, the 5 laps
between each sprint seemed to be ridden more or less under control, up
on the blue line, with only the sprint laps really raced. Later on,
during the second "6x6", I noticed that the teams were actually
exchanging riders between sprints as well. I found out later that a
team can get a bonus lap awarded by making up 100 points in these
races (but with only 5-3-1 points for each sprint, that's a lot of
sprinting!)

After that, came the first of three derny-paced races. 12 riders on
the track, each following their own derny rider. Very noisy, and a
bit difficult to explain to a newbie... Basically this is like bike
racing without drafting (as each rider has his own personal
draft-maker in front of him), so it all seems to come down to pacing.
Each race was 10Km, which only took about 10 minutes, and there were
some exciting last-minute dashes as the some of the faster riders made
up 4 or 5 places on the last lap. The crowd went really wild for the
last derny race, where the top two teams were side-by-side for almost
the whole last lap.

In between 6x6 and derny races came a time trial (I can hear Dale
yawning...) but thankfully only a short one, a flying-start olympic
sprint. One at a time, the teams warmed up at the top of the banking,
and then dived down to start their 3 laps, shedding one rider after
the first lap, another after the second, leaving the last guy to
finish the third lap on his own. The teams were well seeded (maybe
from 5 previous nights of racing?) and each seemed to go faster than
the previous one. This, along with being able to see the time ticking
away on the big screen, meant that this race got some of the biggest
cheers from the crowd of the whole night. The times started around 52
seconds, and the last teams were down to below 50 seconds (which,
according to my calculations is like riding back-to-back 11.6 second
laps at Bloomer!)

Then, after more 6x6 and derny races, we got to the
"Balunstradensprint", the strangest race I have ever seen on a
track... The music got going, and the whole string of 36 riders
cruised around the top of the banking, leading the crowd in a mexican
wave (the riders joined in too), occasionally zooming down the banking
and back up again (like we do in velodrome 101 classes) just to add
dramatic effect. This went on for 10 or 15 minutes, and then there
was a frantic 5 lap race to the line. Hmmm.

Finally, at about 10.45pm, it was time for the main event, a 75 minute
madison. After 5 days of racing, there were only two teams with a
chance of winning the overall event, the Swiss team of
Risi/Marvulli/Aeschbach (wearing black) and the local boys
Bartko/Fulst/Lampater in yellow. Team yellow definitely had the home
advantage, with hundreds of yellow t-shirts and flags in the crowd,
but were trailing 416 to 434 in the overall points. All the other
teams were between 2 and 27(!) laps down at this point. I had of
course spent the evening trying to explain to my colleagues the
intracacies of madison scoring, and I had promised we could leave
early if they got bored.

The gun went off, and the race took off at an unbelievable pace. Team
yellow immediately went on the attack and gained a lap, only for team
black to respond and gain it back. The same thing happened another
two times. 15 minutes into the race, they were still doing 17 second
laps (37 mph!). With the 3-man teams, each rider was only in the race
for 15-20 seconds before getting a double recovery. Maybe we should
try this at Bloomer! After about 20 minutes, the race settled down a
bit, and I reluctantly suggested to my colleagues that we should head
back to the hotel. "No way! We want to see how this ends!" was the
response. With about 20 minutes to go, team black went on the attack
and managed to gain another lap, and get back onto the pack before
yellow could respond. All they had to do to win, was stick on
yellow's wheel to the end of the race. With about 15 minutes to go,
the clock was replaced with a 50 laps to go board. Time after time
yellow attacked and opened a gap, and every time, black (usually
Franco Marvulli) shut them down again. The team yellow fans in the
crowd were going wild, trying to urge their team on, but in the end,
they just couldn't do it. Victory went to the Swiss team, and the
local boys had to settle for second.

We headed outside around midnight to find about 4 inches of fresh
snow, and an unplowed autobahn, but our Mercedes E-Class cruised
effortlessly through it (had to get that plug in there!). We got
stuck once on the way home when we took a wrong turn off the main road
and had to stop to help some locals push their car up a hill. We made
it back by 1am, still buzzing from the excitement (and maybe a little
bit from the beer!)

Compared to Brian's Munich experience, there were no jugglers, no
BMXers, just a lot of close racing. I'd say the stadium was 3/4 full
by the end of the night, so along with everyone in the infield I would
guess there were 5-6000 people there. It was a great experience, and
I'll definitely be looking to schedule a trip that covers more than
just the last day next year.