by PATRICK LEJTENYI
Photos by RACHEL GRANOFSKY

Close to 100 participants, from three different continents, competed over Labour Day weekend in four high-speed events that would melt the bowels of lesser mortals. The fourth annual Top Challenge race course started, as usual, at the Mount Royal Belvedere and ended where Camilien-Houde meets Parc Ave.

The 2005 edition saw two new events added to the existing speedboarding and street luge: in-line skating and dirtsurfing - an Australian sport also known as in-line boarding, where a rider mounts a deck encased in a metal frame on two wheels. The top speeds for all four sports can reach 100 kilometres an hour, which translates into descents that last between 80 and 90 seconds on the 1.7-kilometre stretch down the mountainside. According to Top Challenge organizer Claudia Pharand, this isn't the longest race on the existing informal circuit - she says there are about five events in North America of importance - but thanks to its curves, and its downtown location, it is well-liked by participants. To a degree.

"The quality of the asphalt isn't the greatest, so we're always getting laughed at by guys from the States and Europe," she says. "We believed that we'd have a nice paved surface, but this is Quebec."

Still, the perfect weekend weather, the live music and the natural rush of seeing people do dangerous things attracted, according to Pharand, at least 10,000 people for Saturday's qualifiers and Sunday' finals.

Calculated by a points system and determined by a four-person final, these were the winners last Sunday:

Speedboarding 1. Thomas Edstrand (British Columbia) 2. William Brunson (U.S.) 3. Aki von Glasow (Switzerland) 4. Nicolas Desmarais (Quebec)

Street luge 1. David Dean (U.S.) 2. Yvon Labarthe (Switzerland) 3. Christopher Hicks (U.S.) 4. Justin Crenshaw (U.S.)

In-line skating 1. Sébastien Laffargue (France) 2. Yvon Labarthe (Switzerland) 3. Charles Beaudoin (Quebec) 4. Billy Walsh (Quebec)

Dirtsurfing 1. Alexandre Vincent (Quebec) 2. Guillaume Landry (Quebec) 3. David Legault (Quebec) 4. Tom Whalen (U.S.)