Australian winners of the ADTA Award are chosen for the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge
Steve Cooper/Rob Howard / 21.10.2010
The annual Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority Award offers teams with little or no international experience the chance to race, all expenses paid, in the annual Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge. It is a fantastic prize; a chance to race in the city, desert and mountains of the Emirate and to paddle in the Arabian Gulf, against the very best adventure racing teams in the world.SleepMonsters has participated in the Award for many years now, choosing teams from the AR community, based on their team preparation, planning and results. This year SleepMonsters Australia was offering the award and after a 4 month selection period and assessment by a panel of AR experts, the lucky winners are Team Rogue.
The team consists of Nina Wright, Liam St Pierre, Darren Smith and Craig Edwards, and after a live announcement of the winners to the short listed teams over Skype the team were in delighted and could hardly believe their luck. They will probably have trouble sleeping for a while, but mus now continue working towards their common goal of finishing the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge in early December.
Based in Brisbane Team Rogue has been racing together for the past 3 years, competing in many races across the length of the country, including numerous XPDs, GeoQuests, Rogaines, 12 and 24 hour races, not to mention many Sprint Adventure Races. Liam has also now turned his hand to course setting through the Queensland Rogaining Association , which is something of a steep learning curve he says.
With limited overseas races under any of their belts the team will be looking forward to The Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge with excitement and nervous anticipation. The receipt of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Award package through SleepMonsters can only help ensure the continued growth and exposure Australian athletes on the world stage.
SleepMonsters Australia used a selection committee to get the 16 entries down to a shortlist of 5. This was comprised of seasoned racers and Race Directors Tom Landon-Smith (AROC Sport) & John Jacoby (Rapid Ascent), Craig Bycroft (XPD organiser & host of the next AR World Champs) Robyn Lazenby (In2Adventure)and Steve Cooper, the Editor of SleepMonsters Australia. The panel worked together well, using all their combined expertise to award points to the teams and taking the top 5 scorers for the shortlist. All agreed there was little to judge between the top 5 and a draw was made for the winners live on Skype. (Of the unlucky teams who were not picked Stingers and Giddiup may still be going to the race.)
The winners will be racing as SleepMonsters/Rogue and we’ll have more news of their preparations in the lead up to the race, which takes place from December 10-15th.
You can find out more about the race, and the competing teams, including the other ADTA Award winners from around the world at http://www.abudhabi-adventure.com/home.php
