RAIDARAN-LLEIDA PIRINEUS

Thule Wins Raid Aran

Anne-Marie Dunhill / 23.07.2016

Thule crossed the finish line this afternoon Lleida as the winners of Raid Aran, the 2016 Adventure Racing European Championships. The finish arch was located on top of a hill in the historical site of La Seu Vella. Original religious constructions on this site date from 832 and the architecture of the cathedral of St. Mary of the Old See (Catedral de Santa Maria de la Seu Vella in Spanish) was exquisite.

It was an exciting last day of racing for the first place podium with the Czech team Black Hill/OpavaNET steadily closed the gap separating them from Thule. Section 12 today started in Balaguer with an inflatable kayak section. Teams then collected stand up paddle boards in the Parque de la Mitjana. Afterwards each team member had to collect a map for an individual orienteering section with three checkpoints in the park.

Black Hill/OpavaNET came off the kayaks to collect their SUPs just as Thule were returning from their SUP portion of the section. There was a classic moment when Thule looked at their closest competitors and it registered that they did not have a large lead. (They had completed their 15 minutes penalty from the first stage broken down into two parts; 8minutes at the time the organization stopped them to clarify what happened and 7 minutes in the transition from section 4 to 5.)

After the individual orienteering the lead teams did a short final kayak and the last portion of section 12 was orienteering that led them to the finish in La Seu Vella in Lleida. According to the tracking system only 20 minutes separated the first and second team to have completed the full course and collected all of the points.

Martin Flinta said at the finish line, “I haven’t raced a non-stop race since the World Champs in 2012 and I’m really happy to be back and I enjoyed racing with our team! This race was beautiful and there was so much history in some of the buildings and ruins we saw out there that I want to look them up on the internet when I get home.”

This was a very strong finish for the Czech team in second place.  Black Hill/OpavaNET took 8th place in the ARWS in Ecuador, are currently ranked 26th in the ARWS ranking and have been as high as 20th in that ranking.  However 2015 wasn’t their year as they didn’t finish the AR Euro’s in Ireland last year and they retired from the ARWC in Brazil. It’s looking like 2016 could be their year as they’ve already won the Wenger Czech Adventure Race.

Black Hill/OpavaNET had a very different racing style and in transitions they never looked rushed. Barbora Valkova said afterwards, “We’re really happy with the race. The stages were perfect and not so long as they usually are in adventure races. The high mountain trek, over 3,000m in altitude was really a good experience. The organizers were really kind and we’re really impressed with this race.”

At the time of this writing we are still waiting for the third team to have completed the full course to arrive in La Seu Vella. We will know the full ranking once the points and timings have been calculated; viewers following the race may have had difficulty understanding the position of their team. We will publish the complete results when the organization provides them.

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