Ecomotion/Pro 2008 Adventure Racing World Championship
24 Teams Reach the Finish Line
Rob Howard / 07.11.2008
Throughout Friday morning more teams arrived at the finish line, jogging down of Sunset Dune to stand on the podium and complete the race. First to finish today were Merrell Zanfel and Ertips, followed by Brazilian team Selva/Kailash, then the two Scandinavian teams FJS and Bjurfors. (These are the finish order, not the final race ranking, which could be different.)Mikael Lindnord of Team Explore was on the finish line to take the pictures of his Swedish friends and while he was happy for them he was still disappointed not to finish the race himself. I asked him what had gone wrong and he said, “We didn’t realise Viktoria was not eating and drinking properly. That is so basic we didn’t think to watch it and by the time we realised she was already unwell, she recovered a bit but then still didn’t drink enough and became so ill we had to call for help. It was just so hot that you had to keep drinking and dowsing yourself in water. Sometimes we were riding at 15km per hour and it felt like 45!�
The last thing he said to me before greeting the Swedish teams was, “I hate not finishing!�
Next in were Buff, then the two Polish teams came one after another. Suunto Navigator had been lucky to get a competitive boat, keen to go fast, but Speleo Salomon were not so lucky. Theirs got stuck on a sand bar and they had to give him some money before he’d go on!
There was much discussion about the sailing leg, with several teams calling for it to be voided in terms of race timing. Among them were McCain Adventure Addicts who had an 8 hour sail yesterday and said it was simply unfair to include a time for something outside the control of the teams. Many others agreed, including Nike. Mike Kloser pointed out his team had lost time when their skipper had tried to sail in close to the CP, while other teams jumped out further away and ran into it.
Kloser was also trying to get confirmation that Nike had finished second, but although an official confirmed this verbally there were no final times and ranking available, and won’t be until tomorrow.
He told me where Nike’s race went wrong. “We were well ahead on the first mountain trek,� he said, “then Chris (Forne) led us up a steep gully and we lost the trail. There were big drainage channels on the ground but not on the map, which was 40m contours and hard to read. I’d say we lost about 2 and half hours there, so then we were chasing Orion for the later part of the race. Chris felt bad about it, but I should have been more inquisitive. The trouble is that I’ve learnt he is such a good navigator I wasn’t questioning or helping him as I should.�See All Event Posts
