Check in was busy with the usual procedures (registration, a sat phone check and climbing gear inspection) and teams were issued with bibs of a variety of colours.  The staff were all resplendent in bright red jump-suits and couldn’t be missed!  After the briefing and some food it was time to move to the beach for the race start and luckily the rains had cleared by the time teams lined their kayaks up on the shore.

 

Today’s stage was a series of short fast sections and began with a run along Ruppione beach, just a couple of hundred metres and back to stretch the legs and give the press a running start to film.  This spread the teams out a little as they got into their kayaks and headed a few kilmometres south along the coastline to Mare e Sole . The sea was calm and by now the sun was out, and it was French champions Vibram Lafuma who took an early lead, just a minute ahead of the Czech team Czar Berghaus and Raid Quehcua.  

 

As teams came ashore their times were taken and the clock stopped while they made the transition to bikes.  This is unusual rule in AR and really took the pressure off the support crews and teams, but as every stage has a cut-off start and finish time there was still an incentive to move through quickly, which the leaders did.

 

The following mountain bike stage was two loops in the Chiavari forest, much of it single track and this was the first encounter the teams new to Corsica had with the famous Maquis, with its mix of open, broad leafed forest and fragrant wild flowers – said to be at their best in May.  It took the leaders just over an hour to complete the first loop with Czar Berghaus still just a minute behind Vibram Lafuma, though Raid Quechua dropped back by 9 minutes.  

 

It looked like it might be a day where just a few minutes would separate the leading teams on each stage, but on the second bike loop Czar Berghaus blew out two tyres and this allowed Vibram Lafuma to take a lead they would hold for the rest of the day, and Raid Quechua to overtake the luckless Czechs.

 

A few teams were too slow to finish the first lap (arriving after 15.00) and had to miss the second ride and continue in their kayaks, heading for one of the nearby headlands, marked by a Genoese watch tower.  Now under clear skies and a baking sun, their destination was Sette Nave (the 7 ships), a group of rock outcrops on the end of the headland, where the races first ‘canyoning’ section took place.  It was more a mix of rope works and coasteering, with a fair bit of swimming as well!

 

After clambering around the foreshore the racers arrived at an cliff with a zip line set up, running steeply down into the sea below.  It was to be a splash landing!  Once into the water they swam over to the first of the rock outcrops and proceeded to make their way over and between them, climbing, jumping and swimming to reach the highest and last.  Here they had to make a jump off a gently sloping convex rock face some 30m into the sea below. Not surprisingly there were lots of false starts and a few refusals – it was a real leap of faith as they could not see what was below.

Then came the longest swim back to their start point, and the return kayak to the finish, back at the days starting point on Ruppione Beach. 

 

The quicker teams had longer to get back to camp and sort and dry their kit, work on the bikes and look at tomorrow’s route before the nightly prize giving and results.  When they were announced Vibram Lafuma had pulled out a 15 minute lead on Raid Quehcua , who were a further 6 minutes up on Czar Berghaus.  The Spanish team Catraid finished 4th, a further 10 minutes back.