AR World Series Off to a Challenging Start in South America

Rob Howard / 19.03.2012

The ARWorld Series 2012 is underway, with the first two qualifying races taking place in South America and teams from Ecuador and New Zealand claiming their places at the World Championships in France in September.

Team Ecuador Nissan were the clear winners at Huairasinchi, racing on home territory in the 10th edition of a race which attracted a strong international entry.  None were strong enough to beat the local team, who already have some international experience themselves, and who had the advantage of acclimatisation at the high altitudes on the course during the first half of the race.  It was a tough race with a high point of 4771m (15,652ft) which only 3 of the 18 starting teams completed in full.  Second were Tecnu (USA/Canada) and third were Lafuma Vibram of France, but Ecuador Nissan had a winning margin of more than 8 hours.

They commented; “The landscape, the changes of altitude, weather and everything makes this a really special race, and at the end we climbed more than 13000m.”  They added; “We have now started to think that about the World Championship in France! About all the training and fun we are gonna have with this chance.  As a team we have a lot of expectations for this race, we are really excited and want to put in our best effort … and the most important thing is to enjoy the race a lot! We are really excited to represent our country and to be racing in Europe against the strongest teams on the world.”

Race organizer Santiago Lopez said, “From my perspective Huairasinchi grew stronger with its tenth edition. When we were preparing the race we wanted it to be longer than past editions, adding many different landscapes and elevations. The outcome was better than we had hoped for. We had many very strong national and international teams on the start line, well acclimatized and in high spirits. All of them followed a route that showed the beautiful and hard terrain that the Andes offer and they had to push to their limits to continue in the race. We had a very hard and high race this year, but it also was fantastic, doable and enjoyable.

The near future comes with many challenges for us as organizers. We are very happy being part of the community of the ARWS races and growing with this global organization. This means that we need to work together to organize each year better events, with higher standards in every aspect. We are working already on the 11th edition of Huairasinchi looking forward to a great race with a beautiful course and probably not so high. The World Championship is also an objective for 2014 and we would like to present the application after ARWC France 2012.”