ARC Turns 10

Michael Jacques / 19.03.2010

Coromandel’s ARC Adventure Race has long been a favourite among Kiwi endurance junkies. This year’s 10th anniversary is pegged to be the best yet.

Andy Reid and Keith Stephenson can hardly believe it. It seems like maybe a couple of years ago, rather than a decade, when they started the ARC Adventure Race. The pair is the driving force behind Adventure Racing Coromandel, which organises a fleet of events in their region during the year. The ARC Adventure Race is their flagship and they’re confident the 10th anniversary event will be the best yet.


Adventure racing is a non-stop racing format involving teams racing together with mountain biking, trekking, kayaking and navigation over courses that are kept secret until the night before the race. This year’s ARC Adventure Race starts on Saturday morning in the Whitianga area and will involve mystery sections involving special skills that are unknown until the teams reach them. In the past the mystery skills have included target shooting, abseiling, caving or even diving that, but this year’s 10th anniversary event is shaping up as a race between the women.

The feature category in adventure racing is always the mixed four, with teams having to include at least one female. In this year’s ARC event some of the best women in the world are entered with different teams, so it could be a case of the fastest women being the decider for the winning team.

Favourites for the feature 24 hour race are former adventure racing world champions, Team Orion Health of Brent Edwards (Akld), Carl Bevans (Akld), Marcel Hagener (Germany) and former Speight’s Coast to Coast champion Fleur Pawsey (ChCh).

Other teams with well-performed women include Team Alpine Epic, with Ohope’s Sophie Hart anchoring teammates Shane Armstrong (Opotiki), Nick Ross (Ohope) and Gus Jennings (ChCh). Hart has been a podium finisher in every major race in New Zealand, but her team will need to watch out for Auckland-based Team Nga Rakau, which features up and comer, Louise Mark, the 2010 Speight’s Coast to Coast runner-up.

Another team to watch for is the experienced Team Aphids of Anne Mortimer (Akld), Phil White (Akld), Henry Beex (Huntly) and Dennis Litt (Whangamata), who despite their average age being well over 50 are more than capable of combining experience and ability to surprise the younger super star teams.

But every team on the start line tomorrow morning will be watching the darkhorse entry from Noumea, with top French Polynesian athletes Karl Girold, Franck Siret and Martial Devillres having employed the services of three time Speight’s Coast to Coast champion Emily Miazga (Canada).

Their combination of top men and one of the world’s best women could be hard to tumble, but the Kiwi teams will be looking to home-court advantage with all the major players having raced the Coromandel event frequently in the past decade.

The ARC Hour Adventure Race has become New Zealand’s premier adventure event, with 77 teams racing this year’s 10th anniversary event.

Famous for its historic themes, this year Reid and Stephenson have looked into the future with “Operation Blue Moon”. Set in the year 2018, the theme explores the concept of the world discovering alternative fuel sources on the Moon. Russians have launched the first supply back to Earth, but it has crash landed somewhere in the Coromandel Peninsula. This year’s ARC Adventure Race tasks entrants with finding this precious lost fuel.

“It’s all just a bit of a laugh and designed to add some method to the madness,” laughs Reid This year it’s all about teams getting their hands on this precious new fuel source before the Russians. As such the navigation will be the toughest ever for the ARC,” says Reid, “which is why we’re allowing a GPS for backup if they get lost.”

Navigation has often decided the winner is past ARC events. This year teams will have GPS in sealed bags and if the bag is opened they incur penalty time, so teams experiencing navigational problems will have to weigh up instant gratification with the time penalty they will incur.

“Things like that are what adventure racing are all about,” says Reid. “It’s not just who is fastest or strongest. It’s also about skill and tactical planning.”