Bad Gastein Criterium, live.

Laps at 1,600 metres to settle a Tour

The last of four races in two weekends: a mass start, lap after lap on the same high track, with the whole Tour decided at the line.

The Bad Gastein Criterium is skied on Sunday 20 December 2026 at Sportgastein, at the head of Austria’s Gastein valley, which the organiser puts at 1,600 metres above sea level. It is a 36 km mass start in classic technique, held over multiple laps of Sportgastein’s high-altitude course. The men start at 10:50 CET and the women at 11:10 CET.

It closes Ski Classics’ first-ever Tour Competition: four races across two weekends, which opened with the 1 km Prologue in the Bad Gastein town centre on 11 December and continued the day before with the 7 km ITT on the same Sportgastein tracks. In the series’ world championship it is event 4. After a prologue and a time trial where everyone raced alone, this is the first time in the Tour that the whole field skis together, so the race is about packs and positioning, on a loop the skiers see again and again.

Laps make a race readable for spectators: whoever stands by the track sees the field every time it comes round. Between passes, a skier can share a link to their own Livebib broadcast. Family and friends open it in a browser, with no account and no app, and see the position on the course line, distance covered and a finish estimate that updates as the race goes. Anything estimated is marked as estimated, never shown as measured, and the skier decides who gets the link.