Saab Salomon’s Raid on France

Rob Howard / 10.07.2007

The last 7 days has been one of the most successful weeks in the history of the Saab Salomon team.

Sunday 1st July was the Mont Blanc Marathon which started in Chamonix. The course has 2239m of climbing, starting in Chamonix itself and finishing at 2070m at Planpraz and the race could not have gone better for the Saab Salomon athletes.

Nick Sharp won in a new record time and Rob Jebb took 2nd place. In the half marathon Angela Mudge took the honours - winning in a new record time which was an amazing 11 minutes inside the previous course record. Angela finished 23rd overall from a field of more than 1000 and the team certainly caused a big impact on the French running scene! (And though not a Saab Salomon racer Martin Cox of the UK also won the half marathon!)

Then on Monday 2nd July it was the start of the inaugural Mountain X Race, a gruelling 6 days of multi-sport competition around the French Alps with most of the world’s top adventure race teams gathered together to fight it out for the title.

The Saab Salomon team (Phil Davies, Chris Near and Ben Bardsley) made the best possible start with a blistering performance on Monday’s trail run stage and won the first ever MountainX Race yellow jerseys. After that they were in yellow for 5 of the 6 days and went on to win by a comfortable margin and become the first ever MountainX Race champions.

The win was a fantastic achievement and a great reward for 6 long years of training and racing at the top of the World AR scene.