A World of Obstacles on the path to an International Adventure Racing Federation

Rob Howard / 20.02.2023

The meeting held by World Obstacle to form a committee to ‘codify the sport of adventure racing’, took place last Saturday.

It was a 3 hour Zoom epic (AR is an endurance sport after all) to elect a World Obstacle Technical Committee to do the ‘codifying’, but that didn’t happen.  After 3 hours the closest thing to a consensus was to have another meeting ... but that can be seen as a positive result. 

The way the meeting was presented and organised wasn’t great.  It was only publicised on World Obstacle website and social media pages the day before it happened, the agenda changed at least 3 times, the time changed, and the nomination forms and nominees for the all-important committee were not published.  Many of the agendas sent out didn’t have the nomination forms attached. Then the meeting hit the 100 capacity of the World Obstacle Zoom account.  It wasn’t a master class in organising a consultation meeting.

Despite that the meeting was well attended and it did manage to engage most of those involved in adventure race governance around the world and focus attention on getting the sport better organised. That positive outweighs any of the problems getting the meeting off the ground.

World Obstacle President Ian Adamson gave a long speech about how international sport is organised, the role of international federations and the importance and benefits of Olympic recognition. He said the process for adventure racing to follow that path under World Obstacle would only proceed with the support of the adventure racing community, and if that wasn't there World Obstacle would step away.  They were offering the opportunity and adventure racing could accept it or not.

The agenda then called for a Q&A, before the election of the committee, and ‘general discussion’ was only scheduled after the committee was elected.  Many attendees wanted the discussion first, so the Q&A turned into 2 hours of Ian Adamson answering questions about why adventure racing should be represented by an Obstacle organisation, how the sport could be independent if it was and how the process would work.

It’s impossible to summarise such a complex meeting but fortunately World Obstacle recorded it and it will hopefully be made public.  It’s important to the sport so it should be public, but you will have to have stamina to sit through it!

The CBCA (Brazilian AR Federation) started with some impassioned questioning and the chairman, Michel Cutait, had to stop them in order to let others have a chance.  There were lots of others waiting and revved up to put their hand up.  Hervé Simon, the President of the French AR Federation, read a statement, and Cormac MacDonnell of Adventure Racing Ireland was vocal about the importance of national federations being represented.  There was all round agreement on that point at least.

Since the announcement that Adventure Racing was a sub-sport of World Obstacle  was made some 15 months ago, the existing AR organisations and federations around the world have felt sidelined, and now they were having their say.

Another theme was whether AR would benefit by being under an obstacle sports umbrella organisation or lose something of its identity.  Adamson stood by his comments at the ‘Primal Quest Expedition OCR World Championships’ in British Columbia where he said the race was “really the long end of Obstacle Course Racing and the obstacles are very big; mountains, rivers, lakes ...”  He said he was aiming his comments at millions of Obstacle Course racers who might be attracted into adventure racing.

The role of the Adventure1 organisation, a partner brand with World Obstacle, was a bone of contention too and specifically the fact it is a registered company in the USA under Ian Adamson’s name (as a LLC and not a not-for-profit as A1 has been claiming since being sanctioned by World Obstacle).  The explanation was that Ian Adamson was just the registering agent and that the company would move to being a not-for-profit in future.

Trevor Mullens from Adventure1 spoke about the work of the organisation and explained it was a grass roots movement run by two volunteers with their own time and personal money, and Ian Adamson clarified the company had no part in the governance of adventure racing by World Obstacle.

Towards the end of the meeting there were enough voices, some very insistent, saying there was not enough clarity, consultation or support to form a committee under World Obstacle at this point (and many were unhappy about the nomination process as well).  Those representing existing AR organisations wanted a one or two page summary from World Obstacle to take back to their members and time to discuss it before another meeting.

There was agreement it had been a valuable discussion and the process should go forward with another meeting, and after some back and forth it was left with the current national AR organisations to take the initiative on that.

So the debate rumbles on.  World Obstacle continue to say they have the right to sanction events (such as this week’s Godzone Expedition Racing World Championship) and to represent AR on the international level (if adventure racing now says that’s OK), and AR organisations around the world are now talking to their members and thinking about whether they should say it’s OK, find another umbrella organisation to work with, or just get on with it themselves.  Watch this space.