Saab Salomon aim high in the Alps

Rob / 02.07.2002

Team Saab Salomon will be out to prove a point in round 2 of the X-adventure Raid Series in the French and Italian Alps this weekend. (July 6/7th)

The formidable team for this second race is Nicky and Jim Davies, Marc Laithwaite and Ben Bardsley, and they are aiming to get in amongst the top international teams and move up the overall rankings, which lead to a guaranteed Raid Gauloises spot in 2003.

They are still smarting after a mishap in the first race in Norway and Sweden when they forgot to take part of the compulsory kit (the tent) and suffered a 3 hour time penalty, moving them down to 15th place from a top 10 spot. The penalty was subsequently adjusted and their final placing was 11th, but with the winter disciplines at which they are weakest now out of the way, they know they can do much better.

Team manager Tim Lloyd gave this us his assessment of their chances before he flew out to France. “They are strong so we\'ve got pretty high hopes and a top 5 place should be achievable. I don\'t like to set the target too high as it\'s the first one of these races for Nic, Jim and Marc, so they will need to learn the ropes for the race format etc. We\'re getting better on the inline skates, but still expect to lose quite a bit on these sections. I’m really hoping there will be plenty of uphill on the running and biking sections so that we can catch up what we lose on the skates.

It’s going to be a spectacular course and though there isn’t expected to be any skiing this time the lack of acclimatisation to altitude could be a problem. The course starts in Les Arcs/Bourg St Maurice, near Mont Blanc, and crosses the French/Italian border to finish at Courmayeur in the Aoste valley. The top French teams in particular will be competing in force.

The course description promises “an extremely varied route with impressive elevation changes taking the raiders through the massifs of Vanoise, Beaufortin, Ruitor and Mont-Blanc by cross-orienteering, glacier-crossing, mountain-biking, inline-skating, canoeing, white-water swimming, via ferrata, rappelling and Tyrolean-traverse. Teams will have to cover 14 sections totalling overall 9000m of altitude gain, with a \"glacial\" peak at 3400m. It’s probably the most beautiful and the toughest course of the 2002 circuit.”

As always we’ll be the first to let you know how they get on with Tim Lloyd sending back a first-hand account as soon as the race is finished. Let’s hope it’s good news.