The Dracula Race – Part 1

Vlad Tepes, who signed himself Dracula, was born in the Transylvanian town of Sighisoara in the winter of 1431. The Old Town with its cobbled streets and beautiful buildings is a magnet for tourists during the months of summer. However, on December 21^st the town is inundated with visitors for the annual Dracula race that has been run since 1898 – the year after Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula was first published.

The race commemorates both the novel and what’s known about the life of Vlad Tepes. Contestants must dress in either a Dracula costume or an outfit that resembles the dress of a man of regal bearing from 15^th-Century Romania. There are two elements to the race. The first is an individual time trial through the streets of Sighisoara and the second is a bike race from the town to Bran Castle. As long as a competitor has completed all the tasks correctly en route, the winner is the person with the lowest combined time from both races.

The individual time trial starts outside the modern day café where Vlad was born. The contestant must first run to the Clock Tower and climb the stairs to the top taking care not to hit their head on the low doorways. They must then run around the top of the clock tower in an anti-clockwise direction five times. After completing this task they must bite three apples in half before descending to the bottom of the tower. There they have to throw ten cloves of garlic into a bucket situated twenty yards away. Only when they have symbolically got rid of the garlic can they run to the steps leading to the accurately named The Church on the Hill. The contestant runs up the hundred steps, taking care not to trip over the gypsy boy sleeping on the top step, to the church. Outside the entrance the competitor has to knock down five crosses from a distance of 10 yards using some old tennis balls provided especially for the occasion.