Saab Salomon Rank with the Best

Tim Lloyd / 14.10.2002

At the final round of the international X-adventure Raid Series British team Saab Salomon once again got onto the podium, finishing in 3rd place and clinching 3rd overall in the series. It’s a fantastic result and they will now go on to the Raid Gauloises 2003 as the UK’s only entry. Team Manager Tim Lloyd sent this short report and we’ll have a full race report from Marc Laithwaite to follow:

Round 5 of the X-Adventure Raid Series World Tour took Team Saab Salomon to the very impressive Sierra Nevada region of Southern Spain. The race promised to be one of the toughest yet, with the 280km route taking teams from Sea Kayaking in the Mediterranean to the summit of Muhlhacen, at 3500 metres, mainland Spain’s highest point.

Team Saab Salomon was present in the form of Jim Davies, Marc Laithwaite, Ben Bardsley and Helen Jackson, once again assistance was provided by Tim and Steve.

Following their recent podium finish in Austria expectations were high. “We hope to make it onto the podium again here, if we can stay ahead of Intersport Extrem (Spain) then we will beat them to third in the overall standings which will be a great bonus” said team manager Tim Lloyd.

Day 1 started with inline skating through the streets of Granada, from here the teams would climb into the mountains by foot and bike, with some canoeing thrown in along the way. By the end of stage 3, a gruelling climb on the bikes, TSS found themselves in the lead by 9 minutes. Helen’s comments at the third transition summed up the teams feelings. “That ride was awesome, we were picking teams off all the way up, and when we passed Nokia (all male) they couldn’t believe it”. “We worked really well together, towing each other when we needed to; Ben and Jim are really strong”.

From here Ben, Jim and Marc would continue over the high mountains on the only significant running stage of the entire race. They pushed on hard and were able to stay ahead of the other teams, but the regular big boys, Intersport France and Allianz (Switzerland) performed well and closed the gap on TSS to within a couple of minutes.

By the time the teams had reached the night navigation stages TSS had slipped to third, but were still in close contention just over 10 minutes off the lead. However the night bike stages were to prove decisive, with TSS missing a crucial marked route and having to navigate an alternative route. This cost them 35 minutes and their chance of regaining the lead, their focus was now to hold on to third with a ruck of teams breathing down their necks.