AU’s biggest annual sporting event – don’t call it a party – has evolved over the years. But some things, like the drinking, have stayed the same.

07.04.2011 | David Vranicar

Whatever you do, don’t tell them it isn’t a real sport. Don’t tell them, for instance, that real sports aren’t played naked, or that real sports don’t take place in ponds teeming with dead fish, trash and bird droppings.

And above all, never, ever mention that real sports don’t reward teams for their collective ability to chug beer.

If you were to bring up these details, you would be insulting not just the athletes, but history itself. Because there aren’t many people at Aarhus University who have seniority on Kapsejladsen, the annual sporting event – don’t dare call it a party – that will be renewed on 29 April.

“It was by far the best sports accomplishment that I’ve achieved in my whole life,” says Victoria Gunmalm, a competitive basketball player from Sweden who last year hoisted Kapsejladsen’s grand prize: Det Gyldne Bækken (“The Golden Bedpan”).

“This beat it all,” she says with a straight face.

There’s no point questioning the validity of Kapsejladsen as a genuine sporting event. Instead, it’s best to just mosey down to the lake and join the 15,000 other people who will be in attendance. And feel free to take the athletes’ cue and bring some beer.

Kapsejladsen translates to “competition voyage,” but that’s only partially accurate. The event is competitive alright, but voyages are usually longer than the 20 metres that separates one side of AU’s lake (Unisøen) from the other.

But the semantics don’t matter. What matters is the race, the tradition, and the party whose fuse is lit by the event – this is quite simply the biggest shindig of the year at AU.

“The faculties, they call ahead and ask, ‘What’s the date, because we don’t want to have any exams on that day,’” says Henrik Hansen, a med student who is organising the event this year. “They know that if they have classes that day, no one will show up.”

Kapsejladsen wasn’t always such a big deal. It started back in 1990 as a spoof on the annual race between the rowing teams at Cambridge and Oxford. But instead of squaring off against another university, students from the AU dental school and medical school went out and bought inflatable rafts, and then set sail on the university lake.

Along with the caveat that the boats must be inflatable, there were a few other details regarding the rules of Kapsejladsen. Between each lap, the rower must leap out of the boat, sprint a few metres up the hill and, under the watchful eye of an official, chug a beer.

After downing the beer – the foam must be below the label or a penalty beer will be enforced – the rower must then spin in 10 circles, charge back down the hill and jump – like, really jump – back into the boat.

Rules, officials, running, jumping. See? It IS a sport!

Kapsejladsen nearly died off in the late 1990s, as the university didn’t want its best and brightest getting plastered and playing in the lake.

But the students wouldn’t let go. The dental and medical schools decided to democratise things and, in 2000, allowed all the faculties to join in. Wanting a piece of the action (or at least an annual excuse to party), members of nearly every department convened in the park in a show of support for the race. The students had spoken.

“Then they couldn’t really say no anymore,” Hansen says.

And if they couldn’t say no then, they definitely can’t say no now. What was once a small gathering between two departments has turned into an impossibly big event.

The race is on the 29^th, but people will start congregating in the University Park on the 28^th, throwing up tents so they can wake up with the best spots. And spots, as always, will be at a premium: at the time of publication, nearly 11,000 people had confirmed that they will be attending via Facebook.

If you’re a gambler, you can log onto dk.unibet.com, one of the biggest gambling websites in Denmark, to put your money down. Last year a spokesperson for dk.unibet.com told Hansen that they had more action on Kapsejladsen than on sailing events in the 2008 Olympics.

Anyway, the university now embraces the race (as does the city – in 2010 the mayor gave a speech). You can find Kapsejladsen mentioned on the homepages of the science, psychology and economics faculties and departments, and this year the Aarhus University Rector, Lauritz B. Holm-Nielsen, will open the festivities when he addresses the crowd.

“It’s a great day,” Holm-Nielsen says of Kapsejladsen. “It has great importance for the students – they really need a good social life in addition to their studies. This is a period of their lives that they will remember for ever. Although on the day some of them will probably think, ‘What’s that old man doing here?’”

That’s simple. He’ll be doing what half the university will be doing: watching a handful of students transform into elite competitors. So elite, in fact, that they are sometimes loth to hide their athletic physiques. Last year, a team from the humanities department competed au naturale.

In a way, a lot of these students are already athletes. The medical school team started practising as soon as the ice thawed on the lake, and the sports science team has been practising for months in the indoor pool.

“When they practise jumping back in they can miss the boat and still be happy – we can’t,” Gunmalm says. “But I think that’s just motivation: If you’re not good enough you get cold and wet and sick.”

And possibly badly injured: in the past few weeks, broken glass and – go figure – a ladder have turned up in the lake. “You can find everything in that lake,” she says.

Of course, there is more to training than technique and endurance. The rules are such that a team’s starting position is determined by chugging beer, and beer is a requisite part of each and every lap. Thus, any team that wants to contend needs to practise hitting the bottle.

“That’s why we go to the Friday Bars, to work on the drinking,” Gunmalm says. “Because the drinking is where we win. We dominate the other teams when it comes to drinking fast.”

Don’t scoff: the medical school squad has won nine of the 11 Kapsejladsens since 2000. But despite their past dominance, complacence doesn’t seem to be an issue.

“The competition the last couple of years has been much stronger,” Hansen says. “Now there are more committees who are going for the win and training as much as we are.”

As he raises a beer to his mouth, it’s not entirely clear what he means by “training as much as we are.” At any rate, being an athlete in Kapsejladsen looks like having a good time. And don’t forget – they are athletes.

Read more

• Info about Kapsejlads 2011 (Danish only)
• Kapsejlads 2010 (Danish only): Articles,  photos, videos and info about rules and competitors