Lythgoes Adrenalin Rush

Penalties in Extra Time

01.06.2002

It’s not only the world cup which has penalty shoot outs, adventure racing has it’s own version, with appeals, and race penalties playing a part in the result. And that’s what’s happened at the end of Adrenalin Rush 2002. Hellman Morritz made an appeal and this has changed the rankings, moving Reebok up to 4th, Hellman Morritz to 5th and dropping The North Face from 4th to 6th.

If you’ve been looking at our leaderboard you’ve probably wondered what the penalties are all about. The figures are a combination of two things. Firstly, penalties for various offences, such as leaving equipment behind or missing deichings, and secondly adjustments for missing the sea kayaking section, which is why some of the figures are very high.

It’s this second one which has caused the problems. Race Director Brian Elliot made a time adjustment for all the teams held back when they didn’t kayak, but this was appealed against by the Polish team Hellman Morritz who thought it wasn’t long enough. Their reason was clear enough, they’d been beaten by The North Face, who were not allowed to kayak, then put in an astonishing performance to catch and overtake both themselves and Reebok Adventure and take 4th place.

They felt The North Face were restarted too early in the race as the time adjustment didn’t take enough account of the long rest they had overnight at the Killybegs Youth Hostel while waiting to restart, or the fatigue of the teams who did kayak. So they appealed and the decision went to the race stewards, who are independent of Race Director Brian Elliot, who made the initial decisions on time adjustments.

They upheld the appeal and added 5 hours 30 minutes onto the timings for all teams who didn’t paddle and this changed the rankings. The losers in all this were The North Face who lost 2 places, a harsh blow after their fantastic performance in the second part of the race. Naturally enough they felt hard done by. “I don’t think they took account of the fact we are such strong paddlers and would have done well if we’d been allowed onto the water,� said Team Captain Chris McSweeny. “There’s also a feeling we did so well when the race restarted as we had a long rest at the Youth Hostel, but our race strategy had been to sleep early and we didn’t really need to the rest.�