Saab Salomon Setting the Pace

14.06.2006

After a hard fought race on the second stage of x-adventure The Raid World Cup in the McCall/Cascade region of Idaho, USA, Team Saab Salomon, the UKâ€™s leading Adventure Racing team, retain their lead of their qualification group for the Raid World Championship with only the European leg in France to race in July. They are now placed fourth overall in this three race series.

In an extremely strong field, with some of the best international teams on the adventure racing circuit competing, Team Saab Salomon - whose team make-up is substantially different this year with only two of last yearâ€™s squad remaining - crossed the finish line in a very respectable seventh place. Les Arcs Quecha (FRA), current Raid World Champions and Saab Salomonâ€™s greatest European rivals, fought their way to second place behind Nike (USA) with fellow Nike team, Nike/Beaver Creek (USA), holding on to third place despite a late time penalty.

Phil Davies, captain of Team Saab Salomon, said: "Seventh place is as good as we could have expected from the USA round of the World Cup, particularly as we are a newly formed unit with new team members for 2006. The competition has been fierce this weekend with every top team from the US, Europe and New Zealand here.

â€œWe are not disappointed and continue to learn where we can make improvements in order to be in contention for the lead. We did have some very strong individual stage performances. In fact we were up to fourth place at one point and only one minute off third spot. However we lost valuable time on some stages that we were not able to recover. You cannot afford any weakness when you race at this level â€“ there are always teams ready to take advantage. Our main focus for the year is the Raid World Championships in Quebec in September and we will continue to train for the next three months with this as our motivation and focus."