22 years of Red Bull Romaniacs
The Red Bull Romaniacs is an event created by competitors for competitors, born out of his passion for enduro sport, the brain and driven person behind these events is Martin Freinademetz. Known for his career as professional snowboarder, he was world champion twice, won four world tour titles and participated in the 1998 Olympic games. During his time as a professional snowboarder, Martin met his wife Sigi, who has been his strong right hand manager. Besides their love for snowboarding, both share a passion for extreme enduro, which lead them to create Edition 1, the first Red Bull Romaniacs in 2004. In 2025 we will have reached "Edition 22"
The Red Bull Romaniacs was one of the main creators of the sport of hard enduro, which is now world wide popular and fuels all the associated motorsports industries.
Red Bull Romaniacs has always been one of my favourite races. It requires seriously tough endurance and the 4 Offroad days require a lot of commitment both mentally and physically. I feel like I am riding strong, I just have to maintain my strength for the Carpathian Mountains and hope the weather is kind.
I run my Jarvis Signature tours worldwide which gives me lots of enjoyable training time so I feel ready and will always give it my best shot. Obviously being on the Red Bull Romaniacs podium again is always my main goal, it is always a special place to stand after such a long and demanding event. I look forward to being there every year.
Over the years, the Red Bull Romaniacs core team has grown significantly and features all departments of a modern adventure sports business with a strong focus on development of race concepts, time keeping, rules & regulations, with special tracks created for each race class and stong event Marketing, the Red Bull Romaniacs achieve a yearly average of 1800 transmission hours in international TV and boasts a huge online media popularity.
Martin Freinademetz surrounds himself mostly with active and past competitors and people who are passionate about extreme sports. His team has a track record of creating internationally successful events that are known for some flavor of craziness and for their professional execution. Many motorsport professionals and competitors consider the Red Bull Romaniacs hard enduro rallye as the best organized and most professional enduro event in the season.
Despite the event logistic complexities and incredible difficult landscapes to conquer that are unique only to the Romaniacs event as well as the massive Offroad day track lengths and total riding time, competitors struggle on and keep fighting to reach the Offroad days finish.
Many of them do manage to leave Romania with that all important event Red Bull Romaniacs FINISHERS MEDAL.and FINISHERS photograph..
The most challenging part is the long days and then waking up again having to get back on the bike and getting the body moving, it's really hard to be so strong and in the right shape, its just so tiring. Also mentally the maintaining the level of concentration over the 4 Offroad days.
For me Red Bull Romaniacs is the hardest of the F.I.M/WESS Hard Enduro World Championship series for these reasons.
It is unique because it's such an adventure, riding in such a good, amazing place , it's so much fun. I couldn’t believe where we were going in the middle of nowhere and so many competitors coming to share this adventure of 4 Offroad days riding in the Romanian wilderness.
My goal is to have fun and race, although it’s intense and gnarly, it beats up your body, at the end of the day, I try to have fun!
Despite the large organisation and lots of international travel, Freinademetz has a strong focus on staying “hands-on” and RIDING!. All the race tracks are developed with Martin`s personal involvement and test ridden by him before being approved - in order to avoid any surprises that could affect the experience for the competitors.
Every year the race seems to just get harder and harder, it is a long race, the first goal is to eliminate any mistakes and then aim for the top.
The most challenging part is that it is a 5 day race so you have to stay focused the whole time and a mistake can change from you being first to not finishing. So for me the most challenging part is to stay focused through all those difficult sections
Its the longest hard Enduro in the world with 4 long days in the mountains for 6-8 hours a day.
I just think going into Romaniacs super fit and healthy is a big advantage.
I am happy to be on the 'overall results podium' four times, It's the Prolog and then 4 really long Offroad days, having to be up so early and such long days riding, it’s the toughest event on the hard enduro calendar. It is unique in that it's a long enduro rallye and you need to use GPS which you need to train with to get confident and this differentiates it from all the other hard enduro races.
The duration and difficulty of the event, number of days and hours per day make it challenging. The mountains and environment are something I haven’t experienced anywhere else in the world, the sheer uphills and downhills. It’s wild out there. Every race is a learning curve, the bike and body preparation. Reaching the podium is always a difficult task especially with the good competitors out there, this year may be my toughest at Red Bull Romaniacs, but you never know, I'm going to do my best to make it to the finish.
Photographer: Marcin Kin
All Freinademetz events have the passion for extreme hard enduro in common and make the race experiences for the participants unique:
- Amateur competitors get to race together with the best in the world, meeting the “who is who” of the world's hard enduro competitors out there on the track, at the Offroad finish for noodle meal or at breakfast and evening meal in the Race HQ hotel
- Everybody is challenged to their limits - and beyond, the amateur competitors and the professionals, to raise the bar of what is possible in extreme hard enduro rallye every year
- All the event participants benefit from world class service: they are taken care of from Online registration to Sibiu event inscription, along the race track (with support, fuel and water) and they can rely on a state of the art safety and rescue team, unique rules and regulations and time-keeping systems to maximize fairness and the fun of racing.
It was something completely crazy for me when I came the first time in Romania. This is the kind of race that I will remember forever, definitely. Now I see that the race and especially the sport, the extreme enduro moved to a really technical sport. You cannot make another sport or other type of races like I was doing in my beginning, when I was doing extreme enduro and rally in the same time, in the same year. Moving from the heavy rally bike to the small 2stroke bike is not possible anymore. You need to train and focus for only one sport and this is what I do. I stay concentrate on the rally. I saw Graham Jarvis and a couple of guys and they focus on extreme enduro and they push the level really high. The time I spent in Sibiu was something special, but if I will do extreme enduro in the future it will be only for fun.
The Red Bull Romaniacs has always been known as the pinnacle event and something on my bucket list! I try to live by the quote “if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough” and Romaniacs was exactly what I needed. All expectations were exceeded, it’s well organised and great to be a part of it all. As it states it’s the World’s toughest enduro, right from the start that prolog was not easy for a bronze competitor like me! Highlights were reaching the Red Bull arch at the end of each Offroad day. It continually gets tougher, just when you think you’ve conquered the day they make you push your boundaries more, forcing you to keep learning and pushing your riding. My riding improved a lot just by doing the event. The final finish with all the spectators and fellow Kiwi riders was pure emotion and a very proud moment, the medal takes preference on my shelf at home. Riding with the Proffesionals is amazing, having Walker and Jarvis cruising by you and also new enduro friends from all around the world was bloody cool too!
The race gets more professional and better organized every year.
It’s an extreme race by definition. When I participated in 2006 I found the race technical and very, very difficult. It was fun to ride because Red Bull Romaniacs has a very beautiful track and the public is incredible, especially at the Prolog. It is a very good event.
More information:
2022 Red Bull "International"
- weekly videos on Red Bull Romaniacs OFFICIAL Facebook
- Fotos, Videos and reports on Instagram
Event video highlights from 2010 to 2022
Join our social media channels
Facebook / Instagram / Youtube channel
Red Bull Romaniacs - results facts and figures !
Professional/Gold class
Which competiors won the event?
Which competitors won the Prologs?
Who won the offroad days?
Hall of fame-Who&how many times?
2023 information
The 2023 26 minute highlight - event recap
Competitors 2023
2023 daily videos / 2023 daily event photographs / 2023 results
Event poster 2023
2022 information
The 2022 26 minute highlight - event recap
Competitors 2022
2022 daily videos / 2022 daily event photographs / 2022 results
Event poster 2022
2021 information
The 2021 26 minute highlight - event recap
Competitors 2021
2021 daily videos / 2021 daily event photographs / 2021 results
Event poster 2021
2020 information
The 2020 28 minute Highlight - event recap
Competitors 2020
2020 daily Videos / 2020 daily event photographs / 2020 results
Event poster 2020
2019 information
The 2019 event highlights (26 mins) - event recap
The Movie. Hard enduro is a vertical sport (26 minutes) English / Deutsch language / Français language
- Personal Onboard camera video of the three 2019 Prolog finals podium winners Taddy Blazusiak , Jonny Walker , Pol Tarres
Competitors 2019
2019 daily Videos / 2019 daily event photographs / 2019 results
Event poster 2019
Red Bull tv
- Live REPLAY of the 2019 Prolog Finals (1 hour 24 minutes of live coverage)
- Live REPLAY of the 2019 Day 4 race to the Offroad Finish (3 hours 30 minutes of live coverage)
Archives
2018 - 15 years of Red Bull Romaniacs - (26 minutes)
2008 - 5 years of Red Bull Romaniacs - (13 mins)
Get the full action on Red Bull TV, online and mobile via Android, iOS and Windows Phone and on selected partners’ platforms such as Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV (US), Kindle Fire, Xbox 360, Chromecast and as a pre-installed channel on Samsung Smart TVs (2013+) in 194 countries.
Red Bull Romaniacs hard enduro rallye website
For Competitors / Information / Results / Photos / Videos
Currently there are only two professionally executed Extreme Enduro events: The Erzberg Rodeo and the Red Bull Romaniacs. It was the first time for me to get to experience this event and I am quite surprised: by the concept, the amount of people involved and the professionalism. This is a very unique event, there is nothing comparable out there! What amazes me most, is how the team around Martin Freinademetz manages to bring the participants of each of the classes to their limits. Which is the purpose: at the end of the day it is a race and not a 5-day adventure tour!
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