Primal Quest

A Better Second Day

Rob / 09.07.2002

It’s all good news and no bad on the second day of competition in the mountains of Colorado as Primal Quest teams pushed on through the monstrous 100 mile, high altitude bike ride.

The 3 UK and Irish teams all had good days, improving their positions, none more so than the 3 remaining members of EcoInternet/Golite /who have romped through the field and had leapt up to 9th place. By the time they’d completed the ride and moved on to CP15 on the next mountaineering stage their friends in Bridgedale Ireland were ranked a place ahead of them. There is no further news on why Anna McCormack pulled out, but Matt Siegel, Pete James and Jason Petervary are racing well and despite being unranked will have had their spirits lifted by the performance today.

Bridgedale Ireland too have moved up, and as one of the teams ahead is unranked their real position is 7th. Leaving CP15 they were less than an hour behind the 2 teams ahead of them and over 2 hours ahead of the team chasing them - ‘Ice Breaker New Zealand’. Further up the leaderboard the top have broken away though, with the New Zealand team Sobe/Smartwool pulling out a lead, ahead of Ian Adamson’s Team Golite and World Champions Nokia Adventure, who have the Spaniards of Buff in hot pursuit. It’s quite a race at the sharp end.

The leaders (and organisers) had one major scare on a ‘flying fox’ rope traverse during the night. The ropes on the zip line were too slack and Michael Tobin did a 360 degree flip while travelling down the rope then hit a rock face at the end feet first. He shouted back but Danell Ballengee but she didn’t hear and set off. She hit the rock harder, with her foot, then her head, then her shoulder, cracking her helmet in 3 places and carrying on with no more than a headache. A worrying incident to say the least!

No doubt it’s quite a race for the teams at the back too, including ‘Kinetic Energy’ led by Warrick Taylor, and they too have had a good day. They still have some way to go to finish that epic bike ride, but had moved up to 51st place, pulling away from the back marker position. At some point in the not-to-distant future the course director will invoke a cut-off and that will be their main concern – to move fast enough to complete the full course if they can.