X-adventure Raid World Cup 2006

---

Blown apart

Jon Brooke / 15.07.2006

Mid way through the afternoon, and, as usual, the race is blown apart with well over an hour of race time between the front and back of the field. In real time this translates to an even bigger spread because teams only need to start each new section within quite a generous time window, and inevitably, the slower teams spend more time recovering between sections, while the best teams race to get to the end of the day as quickly as possible in order to get a good night’s sleep. Just to put this into context, the best teams will be starting the final section, - a monster 32 km run/trek with 1,500 m of climb - at about 8 pm. The slower teams (if they don’t skip the section and take a big time penalty) could theoretically start up to 1 am. tomorrow morning! Given that tomorrow’s race starts at 6:30 am. that won’t allow a lot of time for sleep and recovery.

One team that will be hoping for a good night’s sleep is Wilsa Sport Helly Hansen, led by former Raid Gauloises winner, Karine Baillet. After lots of previous high places, things seem to be going very right for them so far in this race. They don’t have a big lead (just 6 minutes over Ertips in second and 9 over the UK’s SAAB Salomon), but they have been consistently good in all the disciplines so far and have just come first in the fourth section, a 17 km run, shading out running specialist SAAB Salomon. On the other hand, with 2,500 meters of vertical ascent already under their belts, the team still have another 3, 000 to go before bed. Outside of the top dozen or so teams there are already some tired looking legs.

See All Event Posts