7 Cerros Medellin Adventure Race

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Team FINLAND blows the rest of the field away on Day 1

Jacqueline Windh / 14.10.2006

Saturday October 14, 6:00pm
Team FINLAND (Capt. Petri Forsman, Ville Niemelä, Seppo Mäkinen, Rauni Pavantainey) started strong, and finished even stronger – more than 20 minutes ahead of their next closest rival team SAFETY (COL), and 50 minutes ahead of third-place INTER SPORT (FRA). Seppo told me later that they were all feeling great, and hadn't even pushed all out. "You should never go your absolute hardest" he said.

Although FINLAND remained strong in the lead throughout the race, team SAFETY made an impressive but steady advance through the field, finally even moving well ahead of INTER SPORT. This is one of Colombia's strongest AR teams; several of its members are former members of the national team BOSI.

SOLE (USA) finished fourth, again an impressive performance considering the time that they had lost earlier in the race, and BOSI were just minutes behind them.

I've managed some quick chats with a lot of the international teams during the day and evening. For the most part, they are really impressed with the course, and with Jorge and Luisa's organization of such a large event. Streets were mostly closed for the skating and biking sections, with police on duty stopping traffic for skaters to cross intersections. Racers seemes to like both the city and the hilltops, although more than a couple told me that 15 km of running on asphalt was pretty rough on the joints. "I haven't run on that much pavement for at least five years!" said Paul Romero. Many also found the ascents pretty grueling – even more so knowing that there are still two more days of hills to come!

Today's winner FINLAND finished somewhat faster than Director Jorge Llano's prediction of about 8 hours. Race start was about 7:35 am, and arrival times for the leading teams are listed below. As far as I know, none of these teams have been given any penalties.
1. FINLAND (FIN) 14:48:24
2. SAFETY (COL) 15:08:58
3. INTER SPORT (FRA) 15:38:16
4. SOLE (USA) 15:47:13
5. BOSI (COL) 15:58:49
6. ABARTH-TEVA (ESP) 16:08:53
7. RIOS Y CANOAS (COL) 16:26:25
8. HALTI (SWE) 16:31:02
9. 3 STEP IT (FIN) 16:32:27
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