Two-Time OCR World Champ Ida Mathilde Steensgaard Conquers Obstacle Course Built Into a Spinning Ferris Wheel
Ida Mathilde Steensgaard just added another wild first to her resume. On July 14, the Danish athlete became the first to complete an obstacle course built inside a moving Ferris wheel, a 30-meter structure at Odense Harbor in Denmark that kept turning as she worked her way through.
- It’s the latest in a string of boundary-pushing projects for the Red Bull athlete, who made waves a few years ago with World’s Toughest Playground, a 300-meter obstacle course of her own design.
The Ferris wheel challenge takes that same instinct for reimagining what an obstacle course can be and raises the difficulty considerably, trading a fixed structure for one that’s constantly moving beneath her feet.
The two-time OCR World Champion (2022, 2023) and HYROX E15 athlete tackled six obstacles spread across the wheel’s 27-meter diameter, racing to finish within a single rotation. That constraint made the challenge as much about timing and adaptation as raw athleticism. She battled shifting angles, wind off the harbor, and the constant threat that any hesitation could cost her a level surface to stand on.
Six Obstacles, One Rotation
The course opened with a string of classic OCR-style bars, tested her grip and balance across a jump sequence between beams, and featured a climbing wall built into the wheel’s support structure. The toughest moment came late: a reverse pull-up traverse that forced her to launch out to a bar and hang almost entirely on fatigued arms before pulling herself up and over.
- “The reverse monkey bar, it’s one of the last obstacles, and also one of the most demanding ones, upper body-wise, and also fear-wise, because you’re really hanging,” Steensgaard said. “You need to make a big jump out to the bar… and then having to make it up and over, and running back towards the last obstacle. That one really took a bit of bravery and power.”
She closed out the run with a leap from an interior platform to a climbing net on the wheel’s exterior, then scrambled up to the finish gondola, finishing in 3 minutes, 33 seconds on her fourth attempt, following a first trial run on July 11.
Building the Course Around an Injury Comeback
Steensgaard, who has been working back from a shoulder injury, couldn’t exactly rehearse on a spinning Ferris wheel beforehand. Instead, she built a training block at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center near Salzburg, Austria, using trial and error with various obstacle setups to shape the final course design.
The idea dates back to a New Year’s trip.
- “I had a New Year’s in Budapest where they have a big beautiful Ferris wheel. I was like, I wonder if I could do a monkey bar and run back in,” Steensgaard said.
She wanted the actual attempt on home turf, though.
- “I’m from Denmark, so I really wanted it to have a Danish location. [Odense] is kind of like the center of Denmark… I’ve had this very visual image about how I was hoping it would look. So it was just like the stars aligned with this location,” Steensgaard said.
A Childhood Instinct, Fully Grown
Steensgaard says the project ties back to something much earlier than her competitive career.
- “Since I was a child, I’ve always loved to climb,” she said, pointing to her World’s Toughest Playground build as another expression of that instinct. “This project perfectly combines what I’ve always loved to do with what my adult life has taught me.”
