Questars to Start British Championships

Rob / 28.04.2003

Next weekend’s Questars 2-day race in Devon will be the first of the 2003 British Championships series. After some early season skirmishes teams aiming for British ranking positions and the title of British Champions will be starting their campaigns.

The race is fully subscribed with around 20 teams of 4 due to start and at the end of the race all those who finish will be on the British Championships leaderboard. (The winners get 20 points, then there is a sliding scale down to 2 points for 10th, after which all teams who complete a series race get one point.) For this first race team names and selections are also important as team names have to stay the same throughout the series and two of the team members, including one female racer, must complete each race. (Teams must complete the BARC final to get a ranking at the end of the year.)

There is no doubting the favourites are Saab Salomon, with Nicola Davies, Steve Birkinshaw, Tom Gibbs and Pete James, but there are many other strong teams who have built up a good level of experience over recent years. Salomon XA will be among the contenders, as will Thomas Cook, Sealskinz High 5 and SCAR. North Downs Mountain Rescue recently travelled to Holland to win the Lagu multi-day race, the newly formed Team SleepMonsters.com did well at the first ACE Race of the year and several other good teams are now under new names for 2003, like planetFear and Aztec Multipower. It will all be very competitive.

The race is based at the Okehampton Army camp and starts on Saturday with the 6 hour trail run/mtb stage, on which teams can complete the disciplines in either order, so they’ll have little idea what any of their competitors are up to. (There will also be a tyrolean traverse and abseil challenges included.) The next stage is night navigation and then on Sunday there is more choice on the final trail run/canoe/mtb stage, where once again teams can choose the order of the disciplines. With this level of flexibility and high penalty points for being late (10 per minute) is likely the race positions could change frequently.

SleepMonsters.com will be there to cover all the action and take the pictures, and by next week the British Championships leaderboard will be up and running. All the series information is on the British Championships site (see the link in the partners box) and the remaining championship races are;

• ACE Races. Northern England. 7th/8th June
  
• Irish Championship Final. Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. 2nd/3rd August
  
• Salomon X-Adventure. Wales. 30th/31st August
  
• ACE Races XXX Challenge. South Scotland. 13th/14th September
  
• BARC Final. North Wales. 27th Sep/1st Oct

Some of these races have limited team places and are filling fast so early entry is advisable. There are already 15 teams in the new XXX-Challenge and no one knows what that involves yet!