Raid Series Moves Aside for Mountain Sports Games

Rob Howard / 19.12.2006

After 3 successful years the X-adventure Raid World Cup and the Raid World Championship have been replaced by a single new event for 2007 – the Saab Salomon Mountain Sports Games.

The new event will take place in the region of Savoie/Mont Blanc in the Alps from July 2nd to 7th and include a different sport and a trail run each day with teams moving to a new campsite each night. The event is open to 80 teams of 3 (mixed, male & female), plus a support person, and the entry fee is 1500 Euros per team. There is a $120,000 prize pool.

The format is for each day to include a stage of the Saab Salomon Trail Running Challenge, (sprint, uphill, downhill, long distance and relay), plus a different team sports challenge (mtb, white water, mountaineering, ropes & day/night orienteering).

The trail runs will be a separate competition with their own rankings and prizes, and will be open to a much larger number of competitors. The teams will race in these as well, and each team member will record their own time, but they need not run together as the team score will be taken from their combined time. In the sports challenges however they will compete as a team throughout.

Lotta Richter, the Media Director for event organisers Saga d’Aventures explained the appeal of the new format. “We wanted to make the competition more comprehensible and accessible to the media. It’s not in a remote place or spread over 200km! And for the athletes we wanted to make the competition more sociable and give them all a chance to show their talents and their full ability in each discipline.”

“In the future we hope to hold a North American event as well, but for now we want to launch the new format. We hope to still get many of the same teams, but attract others too as the format is less elitist and open to intermediate teams, as well as individual runners.”

The Mountain Games is an exciting new multi-sport event, which will have a high profile and top quality competition, but it’s not adventure racing and is a long way from the great tradition and adventure travel philosophy of the Raid Gauloises, which Saga d’Aventures last organised in 2003 in Kyrgyzstan and which was replaced by the Raid World Series.