€58k raised as Trinity team wins Jailbreak 2015

Third-year students Hugh Weldon and Ahmad Mu’azzam arrived at Lake Bled seven hours before the final deadline.

newsThe winners of Jailbreak 2015 have been announced as Trinity students Ahmad Mu’azzam and Hugh Weldon.

The two-third year mechanical engineering students fought off competition from 81 others teams to arrive in Lake Bled at around 1pm today, seven hours before the 8pm deadline.

They have so far have raised over €2,000 for Amnesty International and St. Vincent de Paul.

Sam McMahon and James Orr, also Trinity students, arrived not long after the winning team to take second place.

Third place was a tie between seven teams who shared a minibus taxi for the 50km taxi journey from Ljubljana to Lake Bled, crossing the finish line together.

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Team 50 – Trinity students Sam McMahon and James Orr – took second place. Source: Jailbreak HQ

The teams left Collins Barracks at 9am yesterday with the goal of reaching a mystery location in the Balkan Peninsula in 36 hours.

The final destination, Lake Bled in Slovenia, was revealed today at midday.

Jailbreak rules for 2015 stipulated that teams could not take a plane with flight time of more than two hours, or fly out the same country they flew into.

Mu’azzam and Welson were the first competitors to reach Grafton Street, where they fundraised for a couple of hours and then bartered a taxi to Dublin Airport.

They had originally planned to fly to Brussels on account of its various transport links, but realised at Dublin Airport that every flight to Brussels was either too full or out of their price range and so flew to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

They had secured corporate sponsorship to take a TGV train to Geneva at 7am the following morning, but were convinced by a friend to instead get a train to Brussels, where they could get a direct flight to the Balkans region.

After this late night change of plan, Weldon and Mu’azzam took the 5.58am TGV from Paris to Brussels, and then a 9.18am flight to Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana, enjoying first class seats courtesy of Wizz Air.

Upon arriving in Ljubljana and hearing how close they were to their final destination, the pair took a taxi to Bled, sprinting up Bled Castle’s steep steps to win Jailbreak 2015 at 1pm.

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The location of each team pinned on Google Maps at 3pm. Source: Jailbreak HQ

The challenge – which is run by Trinity VDP, Law Soc and DU Amnesty – has so far raised €58,379 for Amnesty International and St Vincent de Paul. The goal is to raise a total of €100,000 for the two charities. 

Additional reporting by Catherine Healy. Catch up on our live coverage of Jailbreak 2015 here