The Raid World Championships
Patagonia To Test the World’s Best Teams
23.11.2004
The province of Neuquen, located in northern Patagonia, Argentina, is the venue for the world’s first Raid World Championship. It’s a historic race for adventure racing, which enters a new and exciting era: that of a topflight, extreme sport, driven by the ever improving physical and technical capacities of its increasingly semi-professional participants. Selected for the first time on a planetary scale and over an entire season, thanks to the World Cup X-adventure Raid Series, the world’s very best adventure racers will come together in Patagonia in a face-off that will determine the sport’s highest honour … that of World Champions.
Starting out from the winter-sports resort of San Martin de Los Andes will be 30 mixed teams of 4, from 16 different countries. During the race they will have to observe a mandatory rest period of 20 hours on a course designed by Sylvain Thuault and his team that loops around the heart of Neuquen province and the Lanin national park.
In the shadow of the magnificent Andes Cordillera, the longest chain of mountains in the world, the athletes will string together a variation on seven different disciplines over the course’s 18 sections. All in the heart of a Patagonian outdoors that is not just the arid and wild pampas of legend but also luxuriant, green and richly textured with vast forests of araucarias, innumerable high-altitude lakes, broad rivers with crystalline waters and numerous snow-covered peaks.
\"There are no disappointing spots on this course\", said Race Director Sylvain Thuault. “The ‘piece de resistance’ will no doubt be the ascension of the Lanin volcano�. Soaring to the height of 3,775m, this volcano’s flanks slope at a punishing 40°, and the ascent will require exceptional willpower from some exceptional athletes.
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