Godzone Adventure Race

Winners and Chasers and Would Be Finishers

Rob Howard / 11.03.2014

Only one team had ‘win’ as their target, only one team was expected to win, only one team has ever won Godzone in its history, and that team were the winners of Chapter 3 in 2014.

Team Seagate reached the finish line in Kaikoura at 06.40 after racing for 3 days 17 hours and 36 minutes and met their own and everybody else’s high expectations by staying well ahead of the competition for the whole race. They crossed the line just before daybreak and team captain Nathan Fa’avae asked the assembled crowd, “Are you all here for some morning Yoga?”

With no significant technical, navigational or tactical mistakes on the route the team finished 12 hours ahead of the predicted race time for the winners.  It’s a safe assumption the Race Director’s asked themselves, “How long will Seagate take?” and took into account their dominant performances in the previous two races, and still Seagate managed to surprise them and keep the pressure on the organisation.

Their win may never have been in much doubt, but it is still an amazing performance.  What is very much in doubt is which of the chasing teams will complete the podium places as there is an intense battle between 5 teams to be next to the finish line.

These are the teams who 24 hours ago set off together down the Hurunui River when the dark zone was lifted.  Absolute Wilderness had been running second for much of the race, but forgot their Yellowbrick tracker, and had to pull over and hoof it back up the river bank to collect it.  They lost over an hour due to the mistake, but were not penalised further.

Despite this setback they managed to fight their way back through Day 4, putting in the fastest paddle on the river and hauling themselves back into the battle for a top 3 place.  All of this chasing group faced the task of completing the river descent before the dark zone fell again ... and all of them made it, but only just. There must have been some tense racers on the final sections of the paddle. (For the teams behind them it is clearly going to be a challenge not to get caught by a second dark zone close to the finish of the paddle.)

After a 25km ride the race planners had cunningly set the next coastal trekking stage in area once used for the World Rogaining Championships. They described this part of the course as follows; “This stage can almost be considered an orienteering challenge. The terrain lends itself excellently to a tricky navigation stage and at this point in the event, with teams likely to be extremely tired, physically, mentally and emotionally, what better way to test them? Every control on this stage is placed in a difficult position and teams will need to be absolutely spot on with their navigation to punch their race control card. At night, this fact will be amplified and we suspect that we will see a few tracking lines wandering around the hills on the Live Coverage tracking. Most of the controls can’t be seen unless you are standing right next to them so you need to trust your compass, altimeter and navigator and hope that all that training has paid dividends.”

At the time of writing the chasing 5 teams are still on this stage, which included a crossing of the wide mouth of the Waiau River and finishes with an 8km trek along the coast on soft shingle beach. Vida de Aventura have something of a lead as they approach CP19 and the descent to the beach, followed by R and R Sport Torpedo 7 and Wilderness Adventure NZ.  Teams Chimpanzee Bar and Kathmandu XT are a bit further back ... but that could all still change.

So could the finish arrangements for these teams as the organisers are keeping a watch on the weather and wind conditions and could have them finish the final paddle on South Bay and run across Kaikoura Peninsula to the finish line. (If the weather is too bad teams will ride around the coast road in place of the final paddle.)

Back up the Hurunui River only 3 teams managed to start paddling before yesterdays Dark Zone fell and they are currently on the move after their overnight camp. They are Go 3.0, Next Generation and Proactive Physio, and they’ll have some margin for making it down to the coast before the Dark Zone falls again and are in place to make a top 10 finish if all goes well.

Behind them there was a mass restart for a whole bunch of teams still chasing that 10^th place, including the leading international team Checkpoint Zero of the USA.  Currently it is Orion Health in that 10^th spot, but there is a long way to go, and all these teams will be concerned about for now is getting to the end of the stage before nightfall.

Further back down the course the Glynn Wye trek continues to challenge team’s route choice and the unranked Australian team ‘Fully Rad to the Power of Sick’ are at the back of the field and still on the Molesworth Station ride.  They still have until 13.00 on Thursday to make the race cut-off part way down the Hurunui River, so there is a long way to still in this race.

Into Day 4 only two teams have fully retired (Rubicon and Moxie AR) though several are unranked due to losing one team member. Sabrina Verjee from Moxie AR has joined up with the Merrell Alpha team to continue the race.

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