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Brands Back Adventure Racing

Rob / 14.08.2003

The outdoor industry’s backing of adventure racing is increasing, and at the Outdoor Retailer show at Salt Lake City, which is taking place now, there is ample evidence of this.

The North Face have sponsored the Four Winds USA Supreme race, which starts and finishes from nearby Park City, and are running a shorter Outdoor Industry Challenge alongside it. This is a 150 mile race over 2 days for pairs or teams of 4 (the full course is 400 miles over 7 days), and they’ve invited other outdoor companies to enter their teams. Recently there were several appeals by companies looking for experienced racers, offering all-expenses paid trips – how often do you hear sponsors asking for racers to come forward!

The teams will start with the main race and there is some money changing hands on the outcome. Announcing the challenge TNF said, “To sweeten the deal, \"gentleman\'s bets\" will be welcome and The North Face will donate $1000 to Leave No Trace for every team that beats The North Face Team …” This is made up of 4 of their sponsored athletes, experts at their own sports and world class athletes, but they’ve not done an adventure race before or raced as a team ...

While all this is going on TNF will be showing daily video of the race at their stand at the show and their web site is carrying coverage of the main race, where the TNF team taking part is from the UK. This team, led by the UK marketing manager Keith Byrne, recently won Adrenalin Rush and are very experienced. (Mistaking them for the Industry Challenge team one racer approached Keith before the start and asked if his was the team “giving money away”!)

TNF are by no means the only brand using AR for promotion and promoting AR at the same time. At the start of the show Golite and Gore-Tex put on ‘Raid the Dell’, a day of ‘friendly competition’ for retailers, buyers and journalists at nearby ‘Little Dell Lake’, where ‘participants had hands-on experience of the fastest growing sport in the world - adventure racing’.

Some of the helping hands were pretty impressive too – with skill courses being run by world class racers Rebecca Rusch, Patrick Harper, Sara Ballantyne, Adam Chase and Isaac Wilson. The list of other companies supporting the race was impressive too, including Montrail, Subaru, Gore-Tex, Buff, Pertex, Nikwax and Silva among others.

This high profile at a major trade who isn’t new either, it was the same story at another US show IATOS, earlier this year, and at Europe’s biggest show at Friedrichshafen in Germany earlier this month. All of which can only be good for the sport.