Airbus UK Win Cisco Euro Challenge

Rob / 13.09.2004

Tom Gibbs of Saab Salomon Orange, and Martin Warren of Team SleepMonsters, were part of the successful Airbus UK team which won the Cisco Euro Challenge in the Bavarian Alps last weekend. They were in the 5 man team which won the 2-day competition featuring 57 corporate teams from 12 European countries.

The competition, sponsored by Cisco Systems, is only open to company teams, and is a tough 2 day event over 5 stages. It’s run by Challenger World, who stage the Microsoft Challenger’s Trophy (MCT), and included navigation, a night stage, running, mountain biking and canoeing. However, unlike regular adventure races there is a strong emphasis on mental challenges and specific team work in each stage, especially the ‘Construction Stage’. It’s a style of race which Challenger World call ‘Intelligent Sport’.

A strong adventure racing background helps though, and with Gibbs and Warren in the squad Airbus UK were among the favourites, especially as they were previous winners of the MCT. Their main opposition came from the Swedish team, Scania, who won the event last year, and Fujitsu, who’ve won MCT several times.

The event took place around Garmisch Partenkirchen in hot sunny weather and the Airbus team got off to a good start, winning the first orienteering stage (based around selling Euro 2004 football players at checkpoints) and kept the lead after each of the 5 stages. Their worst position was in the ‘Construction Stage’, where they also got a 15 minute time penalty, but they won the final mountain biking stage convincingly to clinch the victory.

The win earned them a free place in the World Team Challenge in Valencia in Spain in December, where North American teams will join in the competition. Airbus will still go to that as favourites, especially as they have a handy reserve – Pete James of Saab Salomon Orange works for them as well!

Full race reports and see lots of picture galleries were carried on SleepMonsters.com, just click here to read them.