It’s over. Rainer Hertrich, the 50-year-old madman who had skied every day for 2,993 consecutive days, has stopped. The run of runs that started in 2003 is at an end, which means that Hertrich can finally claim his Guinness record for “Accumulated Vertical Descent in Consecutive Days on Telemark Gear.”
ESPN reports that the Copper Mountain snowcat operator was diagnosed with “a serious case of cardiac arrhythmia—essentially an irregular heartbeat—which put him at risk of cardiac arrest.” His doctor ordered him to take an ambulance to the hospital. Instead, Hertrich went home, put on his boots, and took a last run. He then drove himself to the hospital and was placed in intensive care. At last report, he was stable and on blood thinners.
The streak put him on a demanding travel schedule that took him from Colorado to Oregon and then down to Chile for their winter.
In more than eight years of skiing, Hertrich racked up a lot of distance going downhill. As the North American ski season was starting last November, odds were that he would have hit an astonishing benchmark sometime this year—100 million vertical feet. No word yet on if he made it.
