The World Adventure Racing Championships (XPD Australia)
Profile – Team Cyanosis - Marquest International (South Africa)
Rob Howard / 29.10.2011
One of two strong South African teams heading to Tasmania are Cyanosis - Marquest International who are an experienced ARWC team, looking to break into the top 10 in the world this time out.Regular team members Nathan Thompson and Nicholas Mulder will be joined by two very experienced adventure racers in the form of John Collins and Jeannette Walder-Wylie (a.k.a. Bubbles). Both have extremely extensive adventure racing backgrounds at international level, with John famous for his exploits with Team Mazda at Eco-Challenge Fiji (4th) and in the 2005 AR World Champs (5th).
'Bubbles' also has an extensive racing pedigree, having competed in Primal Quest in the USA, Wilderness ARC in Scotland as well as Bull of Africa and Expedition Africa races. She was a late, late replacement when the original team member was injured just a week and a half ago.
The team are looking forward to the race, with strong hopes of finishing in a good position in the field. The combined experience in the team, together with strong team members in all of the running, cycling and paddling disciplines should serve them well. The team has already competed in the previous two World Championship events. In 2009 in Portugal, the team placed 22nd and in 2010 in Spain, the team were 13th.
Both these results were disappointments and the team will definitely want to break into the Top 10 rankings this year. The team members are all currently in good form, with John having recently finished in 5th place on The Otter 42km Trail Run, whilst Nathan and Nicholas raced in the Cyanosis team that won the Kinetic Full Moon 120km race in Middelburg two weeks ago.
I met up with the team at Launceston airport while they waited for the race transfer buses, and for a missing bike that hadn’t arrived on the plane from Melbourne. (This is likely to be a recurring problem through the day as more and more teams arrive. The race is only running transfers today and there are only so many bike boxes which can fit into a plane hold!) Team captain Nicholoas Mulder wasn’t too worried, in fact his only comment was; �I was hoping they’d lost the bikes earlier in our journey to save us the excess baggage costs. We’ve had to make 4 transfers and each time check the bike boxes in and out and pay extra. We put our foot under the edge of the box of course, so the full weight wasn’t registered!� (The team had built their own boxes to the maximum specified size which means they don’t have to strip down the bikes fully for each bike transition – a significant time saving.)See All Event Posts
