Réunion d’Aventures
Rough Start at Reunion d’Aventures
Rob / 01.05.2004
Twenty teams have gathered on the Indian Ocean island Reunion for the second of Gerard Fusil’s Réunion d\'Aventures. The setting may be a tropical paradise, but rough seas have already forced the postponement on what would have been an intriguing prologue.This was to be used to determine the start order for Sunday and teams were due to swim out (with masks, snorkel and fins) to a marker 880m offshore before competing at ‘Apnea’ and then swimming a further 350m. Apnea involves pairs of divers swimming down to increasingly greater depths - 4, 6, 8 and 10m - at which they get only one attempt. It may not have happened in the prologue, but it will still feature later in the race.
It’s quite a race to look forward to as well. 11 disciplines, 12000 m of height gain, 4 wonderful canyons, a 230 m abseil into the crater Commerson, climbing to over 3000m on the highest mountain in the Indian Ocean, swimming and apnea outside a barrier reef, kayaking in rivers, rapids, waterfalls and on the sea … and 2000 m of downhill mountain-biking!
There are a strong selection of teams entered, 7 from Reunion, 2 from Belgium and the rest from France. (Reunion is a department of France.) There are some famous names taking part including Eric Loizeau, the round the world yachtsman and Franck Adisson, five times canoe-slalom world champion, both on Team, Fujifilm. Past winners of the Raid Gauloises, Gilles Lelièvre and François Faloci are in team Eider-Go Sport VSD, while Karine Baillet, from last year winning team, leads Wilsa Sport Helly Hansen.
The race will cater for the different abilities of the teams by presenting 3 courses. The full, Extreme course, is for very experienced racers, the ‘Adventure’ for intermediate racers, and the ‘Discovery’ is an introductory route to give novices a great adventure. The terrain teams will cross is extreme, starting with the barren slopes of the Piton Fournaise, a live volcano that rises 3000m, straight up from sea level, but they will not travel at night. In this race all teams stop at dusk and restart at dawn, and this is monitored by GPS and mobile phones.
Already 5 teams have found it hard going, and failed the ropes test, so that they will be unable to descend into the crater of Commerson; instead they will be held for 4 hours when they reach it and then follow the Adventure course.
[We’ll have regular updates on the progress of the race here on SleepMonsters, including more news on the teams taking part.]See All Event Posts
