Primal Quest

Bridgedale Ireland finish 7th

Rob / 12.07.2002

At 04.47 local time, team Bridgedale Ireland finished a magnificent 7th in Primal Quest, one of the most competitive races ever. Their final time was 97 hours 36 minutes.

Noel Hanna, Mo Monaghan, Gary Robertson and Dale Blankenship had been placed as high as 5th but lost their advantage due an enforced dark zone on the kayak stage and ‘Red Bull’ and ‘Seagate.com’ got ahead of them on the run in to the finish. They are both world class teams who were among the race favourites. In fact from the top 10 teams who sharing the $250,000 prize pot, Bridgedale Ireland are probably the biggest surprise package. It was a great performance, especially at the extreme altitude, and it’s just a shame the much heralded PQ web site doesn’t even give them a mention. (Hopefully their reporters will catch up with them once they sober up – and not before!)

As Bridgedale Ireland finished the remaining 3 team members of EcoInternet/Golite were coming down out of the mountains, completing the big abseil on the Bridal Veil Falls and preparing to trek down into the finish at the mountain village at Telluride. However, at this point they withdrew, though the reason why isn\'t clear. They’ve had a rocky ride in Colorado first with the late withdrawal of Robert Nagle and then a slow start and Anna McCormack pulling out, which left them unranked. Following that setback Pete James, Matt Siegel and Jason Petervary raced well, catching and keeping up with the top 10 teams so it\'s a real shame they had to stop so close to finishing the course.

Of the British participants that just leaves ‘Kinetic Energy’ out on the course. They are currently in 39th place and through CP15 on the mountaineering stage, having comfortably made the first cut-off point at CP13. They are 137 miles into the 238 mile course and at some of the highest altitudes, CP15 is at 13,000 feet. Their position has improved every day of the race just by the fact they keep going - 19 teams have already withdrawn or are unranked and the next target for Kinetic Energy is to make CP19, the start of the kayaking by noon local time on Sunday. If they don’t they’ll be sent on a shortened course but will still get to cross the finish line, but this too is a fairly generous cut-off and we’re hoping they’ll ‘keep on keepin’ on’ and cover the whole course. By now they should be well acclimatised!