Questars Series Finale in The Cotswolds
Rob Howard / 04.09.2009
The Likeys Questars Series finishes this weekend with the 4th and final race taking places in the Cotswold Hills.All the races this year have been sold out and Questars will be announcing their dates soon for 2010, along with plans for a new race series (more news on that to follow soon). First they are hoping for fine weather to what promises to be a hotly contested finish, and for once this year the forecast looks promising!
The venue is in Pershore, which is not far off the M5 and the kayaking for this race will be on a very scenic stretch of the River Avon, with the running and riding taking place in the surrounding countryside. This is heavily farmed and populated area, so constant attention to navigation is going to be critical as the series prizes are decided.
On the mens solo leaderboard Patrick Meldrum is only 25 points behind currently leader Simon Proud, but with the best 3 out of 4 scores to count has to improve on his lowest score of 705 points, while Proud needs to improve on 750. However, Meldrum recently completed the Open Adventure C2C and has had little time to recover. Both will be looking over their shoulders for Matthew Leathwood, the winner for the past two years, who has yet to post a third score, but must be the favourite.
As always, teams have found it hard to keep a consistent squad to qualify for points and the top team are currently 'Wight Mountain', Ryan and Lee Copeland, who are resting on their score of 2225 and hoping the closest male teams, 'The Beerfest Boys' and 'Dockers Armpit', can't catch them with a good final score. In the ladies classes there is less competition, with the 'Think Pink' of Victoria Wibrew & Marlene Hammond well ahead in the teams category and Alison Silver the only solo lady on the leaderboard. No doubt she will be chasing down some of the male solos and pairs in a bid to improve her overall leaderboard placing of 16th.
The format will be the same as usual with racers dividing their time between run and ride stages and fitting these around a pre-determined kayaking stage time, aiming at the best possible score from a total of 1000 points.
Reports, results and pictures will be here on SleepMonsters next week.
