Bimbache Extrem - Castilla y Leon
An International Merry-go-Round
Rob Howard / 01.10.2010
Adventure Racing may be a team sport, but there are very few teams who compete together consistently, nor do ‘teams’ always keep the same team name between one year and the next. The result is that following the elite level of the sport can be a confusing experience ... and so can reporting on it! As I sit here looking out over the walled town of Avila from the hotel at which the race is based and surrounded by the competing teams, I can’t get a list of who is in which team. Registration is still going on and some teams will arrive tomorrow, and until the teams get here the organisation don’t know exactly who is turning up. So as with most adventure race reporting it’s a case of reporting what I do know, from talking the teams who have already arrived.
To begin with it helps to know which teams on the start list are familiar faces racing under a new name. Last year’s winners in Portugal were UK team Helly Hansen Prunesco and under new sponsorship are now racing as adidas Terrex. Three of the team are the same (see earlier news) which is pretty good going for an AR team, but despite being the title holders almost no one is talking of them as potential winners this time around. They don’t compete on the big money AR circuit (at the Abu Dhabi adventure race, the Wulong race in China or the recent Grand Raid in France) and as such are on periphery of the ‘club’ of top teams who travel the globe. Most of those teams, and the Race Director, Antonio de la Rosa, also regard their win last year as being a one-off due to the ‘unique’ race format.
Team navigator Tom Gibbs commented; “I’d probably agree with that, but we are just here to run our own race and are not putting ourselves under any pressure. That does not do you any good and we want to enjoy the event, but we are hoping and expecting to get in the top five.� That may be British understatement of course, and a plan to still be the plucky underdogs, despite being the reigning World Champions. (For today the team are just glad to all be in Spain after Nick Gracie had all of his luggage taken off the plane in the UK as his bike box was too big for the X-Ray machine! He arrived in the early hours of the morning.)See All Event Posts
