Geoff Hunt Interview

Rob Howard / 07.06.2005

Geoff Hunt, perhaps the most influential figure in Adventure Racing today, arrived in London recently from Explore Sweden with burned and chapped lips and nose, a reminder of the severe conditions he’d encountered when cross-country skiing on the course.

Hunt is the Director of Southern Traverse Ltd., a company which takes it’s name from the longest running Expedition race in existence, and which also runs the World Series, an international circuit of premiere races now representing 10 countries.

Before leaving Explore Sweden he had announced the race would be next year’s World Championship Race, and in the months ahead he has to prepare his course for this year’s World Championship on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island. This will see the strongest collection of teams ever assembled and as Race Director Hunt is preparing a course on the wild and wet West coast to test them to their limits, while at the same time managing the rapid growth of the World Series.

The later role includes a fair amount of globe-trotting, and he was in London on his way home from Sweden. (His next race stop is likely to be a visit to another qualifier, The Bull of Africa at the end of June.) I’d met Hunt at the first World Champs in Switzerland and on home ground at Southern Traverse, but his London stopover was a chance to put some questions to him away from the pressures of racing.