XTERRA Saipan Championship
Media Release / 14.03.2011
The two also won the XTERRA Philippines Championship last Sunday. The victory is Gardner's third straight in Saipan, while it's Shonny V's first in three tries and ends Renata Bucher's six-year win streak in the Marianas.
XTERRA managing director "Kahuna Dave" Nicholas was all over the course tracking the race, just hours after tracking the tsunami, and brings us this report:
On a most unusual day in Saipan, Gardner and Vanlandingham made it look easy. Vanlandingham stopped the Saipan winning streak of Swiss Miss Renata Bucher and, for the second week in a row, finished second overall.
“I am a lot more fit this year than last†said Vanlandingham. “There are a lot of important races early this year and my coach and I started getting ready earlier than normal." Being ready is an understatement as she finished just eight minutes behind Gardner.
The biggest news story was the huge earthquake the night before in Japan. Organizers canceled the annual Friday night trail run as word of the impending tsunami started to spread (do not forget Saipan is over the international dateline, so it was Thursday night on the US Mainland but late afternoon on Friday here in Saipan).
The tsunami did hit Saipan but we were protected by the extremely deep waters outside the island that took almost all the energy out of the big wave. There was literally no damage here unlike the devastation in Japan and the damage in Hawaii and the West Coast. The impact the wave had on XTERRA was a pushing and pulling current typical of the phenomena.
Just before the race, swimmers came in asking the course be changed from counter clockwise to clockwise as there was a big current. We changed the direction but it was not just a simple current but the aftereffects of the tsunami. As swimmers hit the outside buoy, the current changed to pushing in and everyone nearly stopped ! Then the current sucked the water away from the beach and many were walking.
“It was a weird experience,†said Horizon Air pilot Lisa Brummond. “The current just kept changing and you never knew what was going to happen nextâ€.
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