This weekend we attended the Saint Paul edition of the Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championships.  Wow!  What an event!  Crashed Ice is an exhibition of the sport known as Ice Cross Downhill.

Ice Cross Downhill combines ice skating, downhill skiing, ski jumping, and some elements of roller derby to create a high speed, ice covered, obstacle-surviving race against 3 other athletes.  The sport itself has only been around for about 12 years and hasn’t been particularly popular in the United States until now.

If there is a city built to handle Ice Cross Downhill, it is Saint Paul, MN!  Downtown Saint Paul was built at the bottom of the Mississippi River Gorge, right next to the Mississippi River.  It is surrounded by steep bluffs that provide the perfect foundation for the Crashed Ice course.

We took over 1000 pictures and over an hour of video.  Here is a sampling of what we’ve got:

The Course was about 1/4 mile long and took around 45 seconds for the athletes to reach the bottom.

Here are some shots of the action from the first round.

This is a slideshow from the final day of competition.

Here’s some more live action video from Crashed Ice. — My favorite video