Raid Series Rules and Zones for 2005
Rob Howard / 16.02.2005
The new rules for the 2005 Saab Salomon X-adventure circuit have just been published, and there have been some changes affecting qualification for the Raid World Cup in the Alps in September.The best news for teams hoping to be on the World Cup start line, is that the number of qualifying places has gone up from 30 to 40. Those 10 extra places will still be hard to come by though, with intense competition at the four qualifiers in Australia, Sweden, USA and Andorra.
The other significant change is to the zones which teams are able to qualify from and the Raid Series statement explains the changes were made “to more accurately reflect the reality of the distribution of adventure racing teams around the world.â€
Africa and the Arabic peninsula now have their own zone, with 2 places available, and North and South America have been split into separate zones, with 6 places for US and Canadian teams and 2 for South America. Given the huge interest in Adventure Racing in South America, and the number of major races held there, some protests over this allotment can be expected. Not all the Spanish speaking AR world will be unhappy though – Spain are in the Southern Europe group which has 5 places! Along with Spain, this includes Portugal, Italy, Greece, Slovenia and Turkey, mainly countries where AR is poorly established.
The Scandinavians will be happy as their zone in Northern Europe has two additional places (6 instead of 4 last year) and the Asia-Oceania zone gets one more place (4 this year). Another significant change is the introduction of the Western Europe zone with 10 places. This now includes the United Kingdom, which had two places last year and it’s own zone.
However, only one team took part in the series so this amalgamation was expected, and UK Saab Salomon team, who finished 3rd in last year’s Raid World Championships in Patagonia, will now be competing against the top French and Swiss teams. This is the ‘super group’ of the series
