XPD Race and AR Conference

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Downhill to the Beach

Rob Howard / 10.12.2006

The second day of Portugal XPD began by the modernist municipal offices in the town of Sinta with cars and vans arriving for the start and spilling out bikes, boxes and competitors into the car park as the town stirred to life on a bright, sunny Sunday morning. Aching limbs were stretched and injuries attended to, including one to Paul Romero of race leaders Team SOLE which required an injection to ease a strained IT band.

His team now knew for sure they lead from day one, as results were posted before the start, although these didn’t include the checkpoints from the early morning paddling stage on the Tagus river. The results showed SOLE were 6 CP’s ahead of Team Avalanche , but the mixed category was much, much closer with Clube Millenium BCP-1 holding off the international challenge of Sport 2000-Lafuma (France) and Mitsubishi Quasar Lontra (Brazil) by a single CP. The army team, Exercito Portugues B, were well ahead in the ‘adventure class’ and closest to SOLE on the number of CPs, just two behind on 46.

That was all the teams knew as they prepared to start, but in fact SOLE’s lead was much greater once the paddling results were included. Only two of each team paddled and Petri Forsman and Paul Romero put in fantastic effort to reach all 7 checkpoints.

“One was upstream,� said Forsman, “and we flew down to that one first. I don’t think a plastic boat has ever gone so fast, but it was bad news as we had the tide with us and turned back into it for the rest of the paddle. This was not what the tide times in the route book said.�

“There was a strong head wind too,� said Romero, “and Petri got seriously hypothermic by the end, it was so cold.� What they didn’t know was that their two nearest rivals skipped the paddling stage altogether. Portuguese Champions A2Z Hagolfs/Spiuk decided the fast flowing river at night was beyond the safety limits for their experience and CP Armada/Avalanche made the same choice. In all less than half the teams took to the water and those who didn’t headed for the university gymnasium to bed down. Of those on the water only SOLE got all 7 checkpoints.See All Event Posts