Bouldering and Bands at the Adidas ROCKSTARS Boulder Invitational

Orange but Green, 4Backwoods and Green.Frog.Feet are the three bands that will perform live on stage within the scope of the new adidas ROCKSTARS boulder invitational contest this summer. While 45 of the world’s best boulderers battle it out in Ötztal’s AREA 47 on the 29th and 30th of July, athletes and spectators alike will be heated up by intoxicating rock music.

The German rock band Orange but Green, known for soundtracks like ”BangBoomBang“, ”Goldene Zeiten“, ”Das Phantom“ and ”Die Welle“, play live on stage during the finals of the top 6 men and women.
”We deliberately chose music acts whose band members are sports affine and whose dynamic music brings out top athletic performances”, says adidas ROCKSTARS event director Mike Hamel. „We have already worked with Oli, Kai and Jörn of Orange but Green within the scope of the adidas Sickline Extreme Kayak World Championship. The three are enthusiastic kayakers themselves and with their song ”Waterfall Kick“ they wrote a kayaking hymn par excellence. Our event song for adidas ROCKSTARS is also penned by them and naturally it’s called Rockstar.“

Bandleader Kai Bünseler is looking forward to his performance in Tirol’s Ötztal. ”I have to admit this is going to be quite a different challenge for us. Not an ordinary concert at the post-event party, but parallel to the actual final with full concentration on the athletes. I guess you can say sports events have become our specialty. We may not look like it, but we are a true sports band! Sporty whitewater kayaking and free skiing is more my thing, but all of us often go trekking or skiing in the mountains. We do watch climbing out of harm’s way, though. Instead we are working on making tennis a cool sport again. Imagine how a rock band and their colleagues conjointly enter a tennis club. Well, we’ve done that. And it’s the second sports club after the canoe club which we are all members of.“

Cologne-based 4Backwoods, who skyrocketed to 1st place in the Amazon Download Charts after their guest-performance in the German daily soap GZSZ, love the adidas ROCKSTARS event concept. Singer Daniel Wagner has been an enthusiastic amateur freeclimber himself. “But then I noticed that it’s hard to keep up if you don’t invest a lot of time in training. I never do things by halves so I gave up climbing and settled for the band.” All the more Wagner is excited to be part of the new boulder event in Austria. “With their ROCKSTARS concept adidas has hit the nail on the head. adidas stands for sports as well as fun sports. And fun sports stand for rock music. It suggests itself to combine such a competition with a rock concert. How many sport video clips have we all seen that had rock music added to them? I am sure there is a big intersection of 4Backwoods and fun sport fans. We all do outdoor sports like mountain biking, snowboarding, hiking, wakeboarding or body surfing.”

4Backwoods already heated up the ice hockey team Kölner Haie and their fans in Cologne’s Lanxess Arena with their specifically composed ”Kölner Haie song". With ”Crawlers" from their current album „Be Different Or Die!” they also contributed the title song to the movie ”Bloodbound". 4Backwoods will play right after the super final at 22:00 on July 30th, 2011.

They are followed by Germany’s latest and biggest punk rock export, Green.Frog.Feet, whose album was released all over Europe as well as in Japan. In Sweden’s single charts, for instance, Green.Frog.Feet even outpaced the Foo Fighters and Green Day. All of the band members love sports and they describe their music style amongst other things as powerful, sudorific, jump- and dance-mad. “For us sport and music belong together like cars and wheels”, says singer Tom Preißl. ”Whether you want to heat up the mood in sports, motivate yourself, unwind or digest athletic defeat.” According to Preißl a live gig on stage can be compared with a top sports performance. “During a one-hour live show we definitely burn more calories than during one hour of exercise, which has to do with the adrenaline, the hot stage light, moving while concentrating on notes and lyrics as well as the physical strain when singing or playing drums. You are just as exhausted as an athlete”, says Preißl.

Amateurs in the limelight adidas ROCKSTARS does not only put professional bouldering athletes in the spotlight. Talented amateur climbers who have the confidence to participate in a challenging boulder competition and would love compete with the stars of the international bouldering community should join the ”GORE-TEX Be a Rockstar“ contest at AREA 47. The event takes place on Friday 29th of July and participation is free of charge. All entrants receive an adidas event t-shirt, a GORE-TEX Camelbak water bottle as well as a Climbers Paradise chalk bag.

The best man and woman of the ”GORE-TEX Be a Rockstar“ amateur competition receive a wild card for the adidas ROCKSTARS qualification round on Friday afternoon. Furthermore the top 3 amateur men and women will be in the limelight at their very own final on Friday evening. To the musical backdrop of some the world’s best beatboxers, each finalist must first build a boulder route and then climb all three problems as well as a fourth route built by chief route setter Reini Fichtinger. To claim victory the participants need creativity, speed and self-evaluation, because only those who top their own problem and avoid demerits have a chance to win. The finalist who topped the most boulders claims the prestigious GORE-TEX “Build your Boulder“ champions title. To participate one has to get up early as the qualification starts at 8:00 on Friday morning. However, arriving a day in advance pays off: on Thursday evening adidas hosts great welcome beach party with all pro athletes at AREA 47 and invites every climbing enthusiast to join and to participate in a fun high jump competition on the deep-water-solo-climbing wall.

For further information about the ”GORE-TEX Be a Rockstar“ amateur contest and background information on the adidas ROCKSTARS live band please refer to www.adidas-rockstars.com.

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