World Series Double Take

Rob Howard / 08.11.2004

There is a big week of racing coming up in the World Series, with both Beast of the East and Southern Traverse taking place at the same time.

Teams either side of the world will be competing for places at the Adventure Racing World Championship on New Zealand’s West Coast next November, which is also where this year’s Southern Traverse is based. No visiting international team has yet won at Southern Traverse, so the odds are with the Kiwi teams who will be more familiar with wild and sometimes impenetrable coastal and Alpine terrain of the West Coast.

However, there is strong international competition, particularly from Golite/Timberland of the U.S. and Hardtale.com of Australia, (though both have NZ athletes in the team). There are also teams from the UK, Japan and Holland, while the young Lundhags team from Sweden could spring a surprise.

Beast of the East was originally scheduled earlier in the year and had to be postponed for environmental reasons. This time one the oldest multi-day races in the USA is in the Big South Fork River and Recreation Area of Tennessee and Southern Kentucky. It’s going to be a wild backcountry experience for the 13 teams taking part, and there is a very strong entry from Canada challenging the regular US teams at Odyssey events.

Having had experience of the World Championships this year the Canadians will be keen to book a place on the start line next time. There are two other international teams taking part, ‘Nahuales’ of Guatemala and the experienced UK team Aberdeen Asset Management, who did well at Southern Traverse last year.

As the exclusive online media partner to the World Series SleepMonsters will be carrying live coverage of both races throughout next week.