Ski Patrol Championship in Austria

The teams of the garrison commands of Prague, Berlin, Warsaw and Budapest were among the invitees in the championship. The Hungarian capital was represented by a team of the HDF vitéz Szurmay Sándor Budapest Garrison Brigade, whose members are not new to this kind of challenge, as they have already participated in this competition several times before.

The first day was taken up with receiving the equipment and weapons, surveying the course, zeroing the weapons and cross-country skiing training. The individual competition was held the next day, where the entrants had to negotiate a close to 300-meter height difference along the 7km course. The tasks included shooting and hand-grenade throwing.

At the individual competition, the best placed member of the Hungarian team was Sgt. Attila Erdei, who came in ninth, improving more than one minute on his last year’s result.

On the third day, the skiers participated in a team race along an 8.3km long course with even more height difference. The four-strong Hungarian team was placed fifth in the foreign teams’ competition.

Brig.-Gen. Ernő Baráth, the commander of the HDF Budapest Garrison Brigade praised the Hungarian athletes’ performance, because, as he said, in Hungary there are very few opportunities of training for a competition like this.