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Nokia Dominate Swedish Indoor Race

Rob / 07.04.2004

The Explore Sweden Indoor Qualifier, held last weekend at the Stockholm Wilderness and Adventure Fair, was a big success with the crowds, and hard on the racers. But at the end of 2 days of adrenalin pumping competition it was the mighty Finns of Nokia Adventure who won the free entry into the Airborne Expedition Adventure in June ... and they beat Nokia 2 in the final!

On Thursday, before the top teams from Scandinavia got into the arena the public were allowed a go at a shortened version of the course and over 100 gave it a try, with the winner, Stefan Lindgren, getting the great prize of a VIP trip on Explore Sweden race itself.

Then on Friday the first heats gave some idea of how hard the circuit was going to be. It involved carrying backpacks weighted down with 20kg of sand over the ‘gladiator net’, taking a deep breath and having the nerve to swim through the cold, water filled pipeline, which was immediately followed by a tiring Jumar up to the roof of the hall. There was a confusing ‘dark zone’ and at the end came the simulators, with 5000m on bikes and 1000m rowing, with all 6 members of the two competing teams paddling and pedalling furiously, side-by-side.

In Friday’s heats it was team Arkitektkopia, the winners of High Coast 600 last year, who came out ahead with a time of 20 mins 45 seconds for the circuit, but the standard on Saturday was much stronger and they only just scraped into the finals with the 8th fastest time. The big hitters on Saturday were two Nokia Adventure teams, 2 Team Maybe’s and Team craft, and they all got through to Sunday’s final. It was a bruising contest though, Sten Hellberg dislocated his shoulder from the Gladiator net and on the final day Bjorn Lans ended up with 10 stitches in a gashed knee.

The quarter finals narrowed it down to the last 4, two Nokia teams and two Maybe teams, and it was the Nokia’s who got through to the final. Only just in the case of Nokia 2 though, they beat Maybe 2 by one second in the fastest time over the course – 18 minutes and 6 seconds. Perhaps it took too much out of them as come the final they were slower and well beaten by the No.1 Nokia Adventure team, led by Petri Forsman.

All the race details and times, and some fantastic pictures and video are on the race web site here