Endless Mountains Adventure Race (The Grand)
Bend Racing wins Endless Mountains AR
Rob Howard / 01.07.2023
On Friday morning, after 92 hours of racing, Team Bend Racing won 2023 Endless Mountains Adventure Race. Held in Pennsylvania, USA, Endless is the ARWS North America Qualifier and as race winners, Bend Racing will be heading to South Africa in October 2023 for the AR World Championship hosted by Expedition Africa.
Bend's team for this race included Karine Corbeil, Jean-Yves Dionne, Alexandre Provost and Daniel Tauxe Staudigel. They led from early in the race, gaining time on the teams behind them through swift transitions, efficient navigation on a course that was navigationally challenging, and consistently moving. They had four days and four nights out there and they completed the race 10.5 hours clear of second placed Team Rib Mountain Racing.
With Bend far ahead, the race really played out in the jostle for second, third and fourth places, which went to teams Rib Mountain Racing, Bones Adventure and Visit Penticton-BC Wild. It was only these teams, with Bend Racing, that completed the full course with a total of 107 mandatory and optional checkpoints visited.
Teams that opted to skip some optional checkpoints were classed a short-course teams ranked by the number of checkpoints visited and not time. Team No Complaints (103pts) tops the short-course results with Salomon Canada (94pts) and Adventure Enablers/Enabled Tracking (90pts) in third.
Dot watchers following the race through online tracking and social media were treated to stage-by-stage overview videos presented by Race Director Brent Freedland. In these videos, Brent explained the terrain, challenges and highlights of the stage, improving the experience for those following the race online. Photographs and videos from race media added to the information coming through.
The last teams out on the course were in by noon on Saturday, to wrap up the 2023 edition of Endless Mountains Adventure Race.
If you missed following the race, coverage can be found on Facebook and Instagram profiles for AR World Series (@arworldseries) and Rootstock Racing (@rootstockracing).
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