The World Adventure Racing Championships (XPD Australia)
Seagate - Off With a Bang
Rob Howard / 01.11.2011
It may be a long, long race, but the competition is so intense the leading teams know they must start fast and gain any advantage they can over their rivals. Fastest of all on the first stages were Seagate who blazed away from the field on the opening ocean paddle, pulling out a lead of around 11 minutes by the time they arrived at TA1 at Penguin. The Checkpoint here was set up by a playground and BBQ alongside the sandy beach and a posse of local school children stood by to help carry the kayaks up the beach to the trucks. On an incoming tide Seagate paddled in at 11.08 and were greeted by a cheery marshal saying; “Welcome to Penguin. Have a good day in Tassie!� They had passed through transition and left before any more teams arrived. A pack of teams followed them in led by Wilderness Traverse, then AXA Sport, Blackheart, Thule, FJS, Merrell, Silva, Mountain Designs, Technu Extreme and Buff. The race favourites hadn’t taken long to establish their positions!
It was sunny on the beach, but with a chill wind blowing from the South West, which Team SCAR said had made steering tricky as it was blowing off the land. None of teams were likely to take long to warm up however, as the start of the first trek was a steep uphill trudge on tarmac to get to the shooting challenge and the Dial Range. The leading teams ran strongly up here, but the majority walked doggedly up the hill in the hot sun.
At the clay pigeon shooting range Seagate sendtNathan Fa’avae to shoot, he hit the first target, downed his gun and was off again! Race officials subsequently insisted all 5 shots were taken, so he gained a tiny advantage by being first and taking them by surprise with his shooting skill. I’ve seen clay pigeon shooting in races before, but its always been with laser/electronic shooting systems – this was genuine shotguns and cartridges, with the target disk fired into the sky on the shout of ‘Pull’. Everyone had to wear ear plugs before they could shoot.
As it turned out adventure racers are mostly good shots and the leading teams didn’t suffer from a raised heart rate or unsteady hand after the uphill run. Most hit more than one target and Aaron Prince from the Silva team hit all 5. Technu Extreme were not so lucky. Ryan Van Gorder said he played duck shooting on his PlayStation so he had a go, but it didn’t help his aim with Clay Pigeons and he missed them all. The team arrived in 6th but then had to sit out a 10 minute penalty. It’s not a big time loss in a race of this length but was annoying none-the-less.See All Event Posts
