Wilderness ARC Will be 2007 World Champs

Rob Howard / 01.11.2005

In a spectacular coup for adventure sport in the UK, Scotland was today announced as the venue for the 2007 Adventure Racing World Championships, the most prestigious event for adventure racers around the globe.

The Wilderness ARC, which was established this year and was hailed as a resounding success by competitors, organisers and partners alike has been selected by the organisers of the Adventure Racing World Series to be the 2007 World Championships.

The ARC, which is a joint venture between ACE Races and Detail Events, the UK’s best known adventure racing companies, was launched this year and constituted one of the 10 qualifying events in the AR World Series. Racers from the UK, South Africa, Ireland, Poland, the US, Denmark, Holland and France battled it out against the terrain, the elements and each other amidst the wilderness of the Western Scottish Highlands. The winners secured their passage to the AR World Championships in New Zealand, to be staged later this month.

Phil Humphreys, Managing Director of ACE Races, said: “Jim, Gary and I are tremendously excited about the prospect of staging the AR World Championship in 2007. As organisers we have put in a huge amount of work this year to deliver the inaugural Wilderness ARC and we are delighted that the quality of the event has been recognised beyond the scope of the competing teams. Scotland is a wonderful country with a rich and diverse culture; the dramatic mountainous terrain will challenge the best teams on Earth and provide the perfect setting to determine the Adventure Racing World Champions.”

ARWorld Series Director Geoff Hunt, who is also director of New Zealand\'s famous Southern Traverse, says the professional approach shown by the Scottish bid won the day. \"The talents and skills of the event organisers involved in the Wilderness ARC are outstanding and we are confident that they will stage a World Championship of the standard the ARWorld Series has come to expect. We are particularly pleased to see the guaranteed support from the Scottish Executive through Event Scotland and other promotional and public bodies. It is this type of backing which ensures we can showcase adventure racing internationally and raise its profile.\"