ITERA-lite Wales

ITERA (not so) Lite Explores Eryri

Rob Howard / 24.07.2024

This year’s ITERA-lite starts at an undisclosed location in North Wales at Midday on Friday and has attracted an international field worthy of the full ITERA expedition race (the ARWS Qualifier which is back next year in the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland).

There are 7 world champions racing, 5 members of the Adventure Racing Hall of Fame, and competitors from 13 nations.

The full country list is; UK, USA, South Africa, Netherlands, Hong Kong, Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Germany, Australia, France and Reunion Island!  The race may be part of ARWS Europe, but the entries have come from all over the world.  There are categories for Quads and for pairs and 28 teams are expected to start in each race.

Last year Team Endurancelife ran away with the first ITERA-lite in Scotland and almost from the outset they were racing, unchallenged, out on their own.  The same team is back to defend the title (Ben Turner, Natalie Taylor, Tom Davies and Nick Gracie) though strangely they didn’t get bib #1, they will be number 10 on the tracking. 

You might expect they would be race favourites, but they’d surely agree that tag is passed the mighty Swedish Armed Forces Adventure Team, current Adventure Racing World Champions. The race will be the first international competition for SAFAT since they won the world title in South Africa.  The team line up will be the same for ITERA-lite (Malin Hjalmarsson, John Karlsson, Oscar Svard and Per Vestling) and it will be a competitive test for Svard, who is recovering from a long term injury that has limited their racing this year.

The race is also the first combined UK and Ireland Adventure Racing Championship and the strongest challenge from Ireland is likely to be ‘Rachel’s Irish Adventures’.  They are led by Rachel Nolan, who has extensive ARWS racing experience, and on the team are Paul Mahon and Johan Mueller, a mix of youth and experience who raced strongly as a pair last year, and Diarmuid Collins.

In the Quad race two Questars teams, Team RAF and Trufflehunters all have extensive racing experience and include many of the strongest UK racers.

Amongst the international Quad entries are team Bloed en Omo from South Africa, led by the indomitable Abel van der Merwe, aged 72.  The average age of the team is over 60 and with slightly different line ups they raced ARWC in South Africa last October and Expedition Africa Namibia in July, so they are on a roll.  (Abel also designed the trophies SAFAT won in South Africa.)  

Other international Quad teams are Adventure Addicts Racing from the USA (including this year’s USARA champs co Race Director Michelle Faucher), two Dutch teams, Powerbar Swiss Explorers and a quartet from Hong Kong.

In the pairs race there’s an Expedition Canada team (James and Cara Galipaeu), a European challenge from France, Netherlands and Reunion, plus some even more long distance entries from Australia and New Zealand.  The kiwi pair is John Armistead and Andy Reid racing as team Adventure Racing Coromandel, a race which ran for over 20 years, and for which Andy was the Race Director.

Teams will find out the course at ‘the big reveal’ on Thursday evening at the race HQ in the town of Dolgellau, when the customary giant course map is revealed to them.  After last year they will hopefully have realised it’s not a weekend race – it’s a long weekend with an expedition race course squeezed into it!

The pre-race planner shows 9 stages, including two paddles and the longest stage is a 92km ride with a special challenge included.  The race total is around 250km and the winning time is expected to finish in 40 hours, with the course open for 60 hours.  There are plenty of options for a challenging course in the mountains of Snowdonia and along the varied coastline, with extensive mountain bike trails and a choice of estuaries, lakes and fast flowing rivers for the paddling. 

Teams will be hard pressed to guess where they might be going, but won’t have to wait long now to find out.

Follow the race on @durtyeventsadventureracing on Facebook and @durtyevents on Instagram, and on SleepMonsters.com.  The live tracking page will be announced at 18.00 on Thursday, when teams are given the course.