Team Raidlight Win Raid in France

Rob Howard / 08.09.2010

Team Raidlight will be going to the AR World Championships at the end of this month as winners of the latest edition of Raid in France, which took place at the end of August. (With the adidas Terrex race in the UK it was the final qualifier before ARWC in Spain.)

The experienced French team comprising Denis Merlin, Sebastian Raichon, Sandrine Beranger and Thomas Gaudion crossed the finish line of the third raid in France with a winning time of 53 hours and 5 minutes. They were ahead of 34 other teams and race watchers said they were a very solid team and the victory was built on a perfectly oiled organization with their assistants, Karine Ouvrard and Remy Heritier. (Raid in France is a rarity now in being a supported race and afterwards the winning commented that they had not seen their assistants enough and the idea of a supported race seems obsolete and generates tensions and misunderstandings. (So maybe it wasn’t all quite as smooth as it seemed!)

The race took in 16 stages and the team made a poor navigational choice while trekking on stage two, so didn’t have the best of starts, but by the next trekking stage were in the lead, dropping to 4th in a very competitive race by the end of the next cycling stage. They were allowed a time out to sleep two hours before the caving section and seem to hit their low point on stage 13 (MTB). “The section is an endless nightmare of navigation choices. We think we’ve lost the Raid several times but it seems other teams have concerns too.”

They came through with a series of good route choices and then lead to the finish to win by more than 2 hours where Tomas Gaudion commented, “Even if we had some difficult moments, we took time to admire the stunning Provence countryside and mountains.” He added, “With this victory we are invited to the final World Championships in Spain in September where we will the best we can and our goal is to get close to the top 10."

Raidlight have a strong squad should they need to call on other racers as their ‘second’ team also finished 8th in the race and Denis Merlin pinpointed the teams strengths as; “the quality of Seb’s navigation and our racing experience”. He added, “ We know that Raid in France is among the most difficult events on the ARWS circuit and victory in such a tough competition pushes us to excel further."

Raidlight will join no less than 10 other French teams in Spain and will compete against other World Series winners from the UK, Brazil, Ecuador, Ukraine, Argentina, Sweden and Canada.

You can see the Raid in France blog at http://magazine.typepad.com/courseraidinfrance/ and the Team Raidlight blog at http://www.400team.blogspot.com/