Raid Aran

Three Measly Minutes

Anne-Marie Dunhill / 03.07.2015

The rafting section had been a welcomed relief from the heat for the teams but it was soon finished and they transitioned to their mountain bikes for what would turn out to be an epic section. The vegetation had changed as the race descended from the high mountain; rust colored rocks were covered by thick low shrubs.

The press raced from the rafting section to reach T7, in the tiny village of La Terre de Cabdella, which was the transition from mountain bike to canyoning. The estimated timings in the road book stated that the mountain section for the fastest teams would take two and a half hours with four hours being estimated for the average teams.  These estimations would prove to be far off the mark.

Support crews set up their assistance areas in the blazing mid-afternoon sun. The wait would be much longer than anyone expected and all were glued to the race tracking on their smartphones, trying to figure out what was taking their teams so long.

The first Elite team finally arrived at 18:08 and it was the team Vall Fosca. The race director Xavier Rodriguez asked them in how the section had been and they said that it was beautiful but extremely hard.

The French team FMR was the second one in at 18:31. Julien Moncomble who’d had the malaise after the via ferrata due to the heat said that he felt like he was over heating again and grabbed a Tupperware full of cubes of cantaloupe which he accidently dropped on the ground. Not in the least bit fazed, he picked the pieces up one by one off the ground and proceeded to eat them. Elisabeth Revol said that the section had been a hefty chunk as they’d done over 1,000m of positive elevation gain on their bikes. She added, “Usually you do a section like that as a training and you feel you’ve had a good workout. Here, we’ve done it after racing for 24 hours and we’ve still got another day to go and it’s stinking hot!”

The teams reaching T7 in La Terre de Cabdella had to quickly transition if they hoped to do the canyoning and get it’s mandatory checkpoint as it closed at 21:00 for safety reasons and teams had to arrive at T7 by 20:00. Over the last thirty-six hours Issy Absolue 1 had steadily climbed in the ranking and as the clock neared 20:00, their support crew anxiously waited.

At 19:58 their crew seemed to accept the fact that their team wouldn’t make it on time and they started walking back to the tent where the checkpoint was. Suddenly, someone shouted in French “They’re here!” and François Lalanne barreled in, followed by the rest of the team. We all instinctively looked at our watches which read 20:03.

All hell broke loose when the organizers informed them that they had missed the cut-off and that rules were rules. Latin tempers flared, Vivian Rognant burst into tears and no amount of arguing swayed the organizers. SleepMonsters had witnessed Viviane in the same situation in the AR World Champs in Portugal in 2009 and was particularly heart breaking to see history repeating itself for this excellent athlete.  

Sobbing, Viviane explained to the organizers that their decision was unfair because her team had been delayed at the rafting section. The rafts held two teams and they had had to wait for another team before they were able to start the section. She added that once on the raft, the second team in their boat had a leisurely time of it, at one point a team member jumped into the river for a swim.

Understandably, it was as if all of the wind had been taken out of their sails when they learned that the organizers decision was final and that their only recourse was to lodge a complaint which would have an uncertain outcome. They seriously considered withdrawing from the race; as François said, we’re fierce competitors and we were aiming for the podium.  They eventually decided to get some sleep (they’d only slept 15 minutes since the start of the race) and to continue.

Although other teams arrived after the section closed, those 3 minutes by which Issy Absolue 1 missed the section will stay engraved in the collective memories of all those who have been on the Raid Aran this year; support crews, press, organizers and of course the team!