Santa Claus World Championships 2010

Pants our Grandfathers would have been proud of!

"If you go up to the mountains today you'll sure have a big surprise. If you go up to the mountains to day you'd better go in disguise. For every Santa that ever there was is gathered there for certain because today's the day the crown the world Santa Claaaaauus!" (Almost fits the tune!)

Sure enough, once a year whilst the rest of us are tucked up on our sofas, the Swiss resort of Samnaun is taken over by Santas from across the globe. The mass of bearded competitors, sporting a variety of red and white themes, battle it out through a series of grueling tasks such as sleigh riding, chimney climbing, and even ice sculpting in the hope of being crowned The Santa World Champion.

So this year, after much deliberation over journey length, team members and costume making, we skipped work, raced across five countries and managed to arrive in time for the opening ceremony on Friday night. I say opening ceremony, it was more of a drunken brawl of teenagers huddled in a tent munching sausages and guzzling beers whilst all us Santa's stood on stage pledging to adhere to the rules of the Championships. Which were simply "I promise not to get drunk during the games" easy enough! Having said that, our German is non existent, and the translation sporadic so we could have been promising anything. Once the pledging was over, the band started playing, and the party went on until the early hours. Being mature, sensible, and unhealthily competitive we snook off to bed to get some essential pre-match sleep shortly after the Jagermester shots appeared. Despite our best efforts to frogmarch the whole team home, a certain member (who shall be nameless) had other ideas managing to free himself from our grip and dash off in the direction of some rather attractive locals and more Jager, until who knows what time!

The next morning, heads throbbing (not mine remember - I was well behaved on this occasion), we layered up with endless thermals, tights, socks, vests, basically as much as we could get under our already tight fitting Super Santa costumes. Not forgetting the extra pair socks each of the boys rather unsubtly stuffed down their enormous pants, after all the suits were tight, the snow cold, and these boys have their own little insecurities. Personally, with no pockets, it seemed to me the perfect place to stash a few tissues, some lipsalve and a mini snickers - amazing what you can fit into these things designed to hold so little!


The British team: Super Santa's



Doing it for our country!

Fully kitted out we strutted proudly from our hotel, capes flying, grinning like real live superheros into the knee deep snow. We'd been informed by the organisers that at somepoint during the day we'd have to present ourselves to the other teams in an 'original' manner. With half our team having flown in from the UK late the night before, and the pretty blondes distracting their virial young minds we had little, if any time to come up with an award winning presentation, so after a quick discussion settled on a plan of action on route to the opening of the games. It was simple, we didn't speak German and didn't know if anyone spoke English, so decided to stick to the universal language of mime and song. We'd race on to the stage shouting "Is it a bird...is it a plane....no it's Super Santa" (surely everyone knows that section of the film in any language) then we would spin in slow motion whilst singing the theme tune (da da da da da daaaa daaaa da) and ripping off our ski suits to reveal none other than Super Santa himself. The crowds would go wild and we would become Santa World Champions within seconds! Still, that was the third event of the day, so in theory we had plenty of time to practice.



We arrived on the ski slopes full of excitement, to be greeted by 22 other teams of rather normal looking Santas, and lots of German announcements being made across a tannoy for one very long, cold hour. At the end of it all there was a fantastic marching band playing Christmas tunes, so it was almost worth the frozen toes, fingers, bottoms - you name it, it was frozen and we hadn't even started the competition! Sadly these things tend to start as they mean to go on, and this was no exception, it was merely the start of a long, cold day of waiting around whilst people announced stuff in German around us.
Finally though the events began with the Santa's Zipfy Bob Race, which was probably the best of the days events - wizzing down the ski slope on a zuped up bum-sled in teams of four, so fast in fact that one of our team crashed and landed in a heap on the edge of the slope!



The next event (after another two hours standing around in the snow, in oversized underpants and tights!) was the Santa Parade, in which the boys, or rather their packages, were admired by all. Every 500 yards we were stopped by giggling groups of females demanding photos with my well endowed companions - to be honest I felt a little left out, I only wish I'd remembered to bring a couple of balloons to stuff down the old bra, then who knows what might have happened!

The parade was followed swiftly by the presentation, not on stage to the others as we had originally thought, but outside in the snow, in front of a panel of four judges. Our amazing idea which we hadn't managed to find a huge amount of time to practice, manifested itself in a mass of frantically flailing arms, spinning in all directions at different speeds to a shouted version of some unrecognisable tune, as coats refused to come off, snow flew, and Super Santa was ever so slightly less Super than his carefully designed costume. Superheros we were not!
Stifling shameful giggles, as the crowd watched on in silence we quickly bowed, scuttled across the floor collected up our snow covered clothes and dashed into the tent to lick our bright red wounds and of course warm our frozen appendages!

By the time we got round to the next events the sun was sinking and with it the temperature. So from then on it was just a case of getting through it. We climbed chimneys, rode sleighs, guessed where pictures where taken from around the world, and made a rather fetching ice sculpture, and an interesting gingerbread design.


I didn't do A-level art for nothing, as this award winning sculpture might suggest!

Despite our best efforts, sadly we didn't make it through to the second round, but every cloud has a sliver lining. This silver lining was a very hot shower, followed by layers of appropriate clothes and ski jackets. It sounds like nothing in comparison to becoming Santa World Champion, but at that moment in time all our unattractive competitiveness was lost and I can honestly say I have never been more happy (or perhaps desperate) to loose in favour heat!

Of course though, once we'd re-climatized we headed back out to the tent to see the final take place. Arriving late, we missed the famous Steinbock race, (which had given us hours of fun the night before) but got there in time for the karaoke final and yet another serious party. This time though the party was madness, people were on, under and even throwing over, tables whilst downing bottles of beer. Being the one major event in the tiny town of Samnaun, I think the Clauwau is an excuse for all the underage locals to do exactly what I did at their age, and drink themselves to oblivion. Being (...yes you've heard it a thousand times) nearly thirty (!) though we swiftly removed ourselves and made our way to one of the two open bars in the village with all the middle aged Santa's such as ourselves for a celebratory drink!



Even Super Santa goes shopping

Would we do it again? Not a chance!

Whilst The Santa World Championships is a great idea, and the activities fun, the event itself wasn't fun. There was no camaraderie, no team spirit between the competitors, just alot of waiting around in the cold, with other grumpy, frozen teams hoping for something exciting to happen. Most of the teams are locals and enter on a yearly basis, and with a few thousand euros as a prize, they are perhaps, more concerned about the competition rather than supporting the other teams and having a laugh - this is serious business after all.
Obviously we had fun within our own team, and got to run around in Superhero outfits for a whole day, but it's really not worth a trip all that way!

The worst thing is, I don't think it's actually a fair competition. A grand statement I know, I don't like to sound like a bad looser, and we were by no means winning material on most events, but we did make a lot of effort with our costumes. They send a breakdown of all the events before the competition, most of which are impossible to prepare for unless you happen to have a climbable chimney, and a spare horse drawn sleigh, but you can prepare your costume for The Santa Parade. The website states during this section of the competition; "The jury judges the originality of the costumes". After being only one of two teams with original and homemade costumes we were shocked to discover both teams had received the lowest marks for this event. So in an effort to understand where we'd gone wrong I emailed the organisers asking how the scores for this section were broken down, only to receive the following response:
"All the disciplines that were judged by the jury didn't have a system of judgement".
Fantastic! Clauwau - a competition with no rules! Good Luck next year people!

Still, this is not the end of Super Santa, so pleased we were with our lovely costume we have decided to take him to the New Years Run in Berlin this year - lets just hope those Germans appreciate the effort a little more and we win the enormous pancake on offer for best fancy dress, or at least make it round the 6k run with our post Christmas bellies!


Super Santa's Clauwau 2010

Click here for the ESPN Video of the event starring our goodselves!