Bull of Africa
Merrell/Wigwam Adventure in the lead
Lisa de Speville / 25.06.2005
In the last 24hrs the race lead changed hands. By late evening on Saturday two teams had still not checked in to CP6. Team-members have been dropping out. Most teams are continuing unranked. Front teams are 1.5hrs to 2hrs behind scheduled. And, we’ve crossed over into another country. Our base is now in Namibia.First, an apology for my tardy communication since noon today (Saturday). We’ve now shifted our mobile race HQ to Felix Unite, a river operation in Namibia on Orange River. It is a great location, which will serve as CP12 tomorrow and the finish venue in another 3-days. Only you, me and the other race officials know that this is to be the finish venue. The teams will only learn about this when they plot their last trekking and mountain biking stages at CP22.
To catch up… On Friday evening at 17h30 the race started. Cyanosis Powerade stormed to the front building a 35-minute lead by CP2 only 4hrs into the race. They held on to their lead throughout the night arriving at CP6 on their mountain bikes (they transitioned to mountain bikes at CP5 after a 60km hike) 15-minutes ahead of Merrell/Wigwam Adventure and Mazda Salomon. Mazda were way back at CP2 after a bad route choice on Friday night. They made up this time during the night.
Cyanosis, Merrell and Mazda left CP6 together heading away from the Pelladrif river camp. It appears that Cyanosis’ navigator Nicholas Mulder was leading the pack, his team- mates trailing behind Merrell and Mazda. Nicholas slowed to join his team-mates, allowing Merrell and Mazda to whiz past. Doing a sneaky Cyanosis sped off down the right road leaving Merrell and Mazda bewildered. They tried two other nearby roads before selecting the correct one.
Piecing together their reports some hours later it seems that the teams rode together – or within close proximity – for 3-4hours this morning. Then Cyanosis began to drop back. I’ve heard (unconfirmed) that they’ve broken a pedal and more seriously, that Erica Terblanche and Clinton Mackintosh are unwell. Erica seems to be battling a fever. Clinton is suffering from nausea and vomiting.
All was revealed, and details followed later, when we discovered Mazda and Merrell jointly in the lead about 12km before the end of this 130km biking stage.
The two teams rode into CP8 where they had to sit out the compulsory 30-minute stop, which has been implemented at all bike transitions – whether ending or starting a biking leg. Prior to the race start the foreign teams were consulted and they agreed on a 30-minute stop. As South African teams have their bikes transported by their ‘support crews’ (in this race the crews’ only role is to pick-up and drop-off bikes) and foreign teams have their bikes transported in bike boxes by race organisation a fair period had to be determined for foreign teams to assemble/dismantle their bikes and for South African teams to dissemble, reassemble and clean the mega loads of dust accumulated during transport from their bikes.
Although this had been agreed upon prior to the race start, Merrell/Wigwam Adventure’s Robyn Benincasa says that it takes them 30-minutes to get their bikes packed up and that while SA teams are eating, they have more work to do in packing their boxes. Her comments, while accurate, were more an observation than a complaint.
So, Mazda and Merrell headed in to CP8 together and left 5-minutes apart with Mazda in the lead. They headed down to the Orange river, Mazda crossing further upstream than Merrell.
At around 02h00 (Sunday) I received news that Mazda and Merrell had both reached CP10, one of two checkpoints on this ‘river trekking’ stage. They were both freezing and were standing around the marshals’ fire to warm up.
A little on this trekking section… It is around 50km in total and it follows the course of the river. BUT… because the mountains on either side come VERY close to the river they can’t possibly stay on one bank the whole time. And, because the mountains are numerous and very rocky, going inland is not an option. There are likely to be trails on each bank as there are numerous plantations. I expect that they will have to swim across a few times – not nice at night, in the cold.
At 06h00, 30-minutes ago, I received word that Merrell had arrived at CP11, the hike-to-bike transition. They arrived there at around 05h15 and left around 05h45 after the 30-minute stop. It seems Mazda is not far behind but I have received no confirmation. They have short 27km cycle on reasonable dirt roads across the Namibian border and through here to CP12 – race HQ. They are expected to arrive within the next hour.
More on other teams in my next posting.
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