7 Cerros Medellin Adventure Race

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A fast start to Day 2

Jacqueline Windh / 15.10.2006

The start was at City Hall at Plaza Alpujarra, where they finished yesterday. As teams reviewed maps before the start, looking up they could see a cord being lowered from a 13 story office tower – the rappel that they would be doing later today.

Starting again with the individual skate competitors, they headed for a fast lap through downtown. World champ Andrés Botero led the pack by far but next in, ahead of the rest of the individuals, was CORRE CAMINOS (COL). FINLAND, who led all day yesterday were, for the first time, quite far back in the pack – but in such a short and fast event that would make little difference to their day.

From Alpujarra they biked through town (traffic still considerable for a Sunday morning) and headed to a Cerro Nutibara, a lush forested hill that rises from the centre of the city, for some wet and slippery single-track, in grassy slopes and through open forest. Then they continued through town to Cerro Volador for the orienteering test. The hill is lovely and forested, with a few roads winding up and and traversed by many trails that both skirt around it and head straight up-slope. They had to hit 23 points, in order, using a 1:500 scale map that showed all of the trails. The points were located all over the hill, so there was a lot of choice in route selection – whether to take longer routes on trails, or to take shorter but steeper and routes bushbashing. This section took a lot of time, with FINLAND just barely keeping ahead of SOLE and INTER SPORT, then ABARTH-TEVA following, and Colombia's star teams SAFETY TREK NATIVOS, BOSI and RIOS Y CANOAS chasing tight together, close behind Spain. Once the navigational loop was completed, they headed back through town to Alpujarra for the rappel, off a sheer 13 story office building. Leaving Nutibara, FINLAND led by a hair, with SOLE (USA) and then INTER SPORT (FRA) chasing close behind.
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