Nokia Make Vital Errors at the Finish

Chris/Raid Gauloises / 05.05.2002

Holders of the title, the Finns of Nokia Adventure, finish second after committing fatal orienteering and tactical errors during the final trekking section.

Normally untouchable at orienteering, a “national sport� among Scandinavians, yhey had to rely on more than just skill and “sisu� (guts) to bring them home, after failuring to locate the best options in their head-to-head duel for first place with VSD-Eider cost them 3.5 hours. Reilumeninki, Finnish for “fair play�, something on which they usually pride themselves, also played a serious role. Unaware that they had dropped their CP card earlier on, they were more than a little surprised when VSD-Eider handed it over as they met further along the course. This, combined with the orienteering errors, indicates how exhausted the team were as they finished the trekking section, where they compounded an already delicate situation by deciding not to sleep before getting into the kayaks.

Team captain Petri Forsmann, explained what happened: “Our initial plan was to get some sleep just before the sea-kayaking section but we altered that and slept one hour before the trek. Then we made our first orienteering mistake which cost us 1.5 hours followed by another when we lost 2 hours. We thought that VSD-Eider were behind us definitively but when we saw them out in front our hearts sank. Not being particularly powerful paddlers, we knew it was paramount to be first in the kayaks but when we took to the water our morale was sapped and so was our strength. Half asleep, we barely had enough energy to look behind to see if the third team, Ertips, was tailing us�.

It was a very different story in 2000, when Nokia made a last minute comeback to catch Intersport at the post, finishing barely three minutes in front. Not this time though. “We’ve never slept so much during a race, getting as much as 3 to 5 hours on some nights, which we thought would enable us to pick up the pace as we neared the finish. Our last stop on a river-bank was interrupted by a villager brandishing a Kalashnikov. He looked threatening and when more people turned up we were lucky to find someone who spoke English who could explain our presence and defuse the situation…�

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