Bull of Africa
Sunday, 08h00: News on the teams
Lisa de Speville / 26.06.2005
Away from the spotlight of Mazda Salomon and Merrell/Wigwam Adventure…
Based at CP6, the first bike checkpoint, I had the fortune of seeing a number of teams. Most made a relatively quick transition to rest for a few minutes, feed before setting off. The ones I saw – up to Nike ACG Endure – were all in good spirits.
Teams seem not to have had a problem with navigation from CP2 through 3 and 4 to 5 in the dark. Even though it looks quite complicated on the map it seems to have been fairly straight-forward.
[UPDATE: Gap between Merrell and Mazda at CP10 was around 30-minutes. By CP11 is was more. When my source left CP11, Mazda were nowhere in sight. They may have slept. Merrell have not slept at all. The only other team on the river trekking section is Cross Sportswear. Cyanosis reached CP8 in a not-good state. Clinton Mackintosh is severely ill. Although the team considered withdrawing, they decided to sleep and rest allowing Clinton to recover a little. They will make a decision in the morning. Halti, Martin & Scheepers and DueSouth made CP8 and seem to have slept. HOT NEWS… the bike-transition compulsory stop has been extended to 45-minutes from 30-minutes. Foreign teams have requested the extension to give them more time to pack their bike boxes and to eat. This will apply from CP12 throughout the rest of the race.]
Regarding CP3… Stephan Muller, Martin & Scheepers/Pinegold’s navigator said that there was an obvious “short cut�. It seems most teams went that way only to discover a impassable 50m cliff. “We saw some teams [foreign] coming back that way but typically didn’t believe them… we don’t know whether their decision to turn back was just because they’re ‘soft’,� he said laughing. “But, this was definitely one that we couldn’t get down�,
Halti are doing ok. Mikael was looking a little tired at PC6, which was evident a little later. Just as they were leaving the CP he discovered a puncture, which he repaired before checking out. Barely 2km down the road he again punctured. Our photographer Peder Sundstrom caught Mikael napping on the ground while his team-mates repaired the wheel. Halti made up a lot of time on the 130km mountain biking stage. The teams had been given a waypoint which indicated a water supply and a road leading through to CP7. Halti skipped the decided not to take this route and by selecting a trail not indicated on the map the gained hours, catching up to Cyanosis.
Nike ACG Endure took advantage of the small ‘restaurant’ at CP6 – Klein Pella, a date plantation and guesthouse, to order some food. When I left they were still at the PC waiting for their meals to arrive.
It was only at PC8 that I received word from Evan Price, Tension Structures’ captain. Suffering from flu and related ailments, Evan has been on medication over the past few days. Still ill and battling he decided to withdraw at the end of the first trekking section. Team Jeep SA, who started with 3-people after flu-riddled Piers Pirow decided not to start, have joined up with Tension Structure’s 3. They’re racing as a 6-person team. Both teams are unranked.
Balance Vector off to a rough start when captain Nathan Fa’avae made a critical navigation error going to CP3. “I wrote the co-ordinates the wrong way round. Instead of 16 I wrote 61 and we ended up scaling a fairly decent sized hill,� he said.
They have tried to make up time by doing a fair amount of jogging but found the terrain hard going. However, they were lying in 6th place by the time they reached CP7. Lisa Savage had some close calls after CP5 on the biking stage in deep sand. Apparently she also came close to dislocating her shoulder in the first river crossing. At CP6 the team was concerned about their food supply, which was rapidly running out.
Distressing news is that Balance Vector is now racing unranked (from CP7). George Christison is battling some kind of illness, probably flu (I hope to catch up with him here this morning – I heard he arrived here last night). He wisely withdrew. I first saw George in Borneo last year at Mild Seven Outdoor Quest. He’d fallen off his roller-blades the day prior to the race start and continued racing (and falling daily) with a broken wrist. Deciding to withdraw was certainly a hard decision for this determined and committed racer. This was the right thing to do though – you don’t play games with viruses…
Team Olympus is trailing far at the back. They were unexpectedly hours behind by CP2 because they had tried to avoid the river crossing at CP1, right at the beginning of the race. I believe they walked up and down the river looking for a ‘less soaking’ crossing place.
They’re now right at the back with The Thales Matadors, a rookie team. By last night (Saturday) around 20h00 they had still not yet reached the first mountain biking checkpoint at CP6 at Klein Pella.
Team 180° Adventures have an American inclusion, Andy Tubbs. I raced with Andy at a popular 250km at the end of April so can definitely say that he is a little off-colour. He’s struggling with a persistent stomach bug that he caught pre-race. It has him heading off into the bushes for a pit-stop regularly. But the team is still performing consistently and are with the chasing pack. I believe they made it to CP8 at some stage last night. They probably slept.
Cross Sportswear are looking strong. We saw them in 3rd place a little over an hour behind Merrell and Mazda yesterday afternoon. They appeared to be having no problems and were enjoying a consistent race.
At PC8, while they were preparing to leave the transition, I chatted to Merrell/Wigwam Adventure’s Robyn Benincasa about their assessment of the course. “It’s all up to fate at this point,� she said. We’ve got no real idea how long this race is actually going to take.�
They rode with Mazda for most of the 130km stage and I was interested to know whether the teams had planned to stick together along the river at night. “We’re not specifically looking at staining together. They are good company and we’re fine with them and fine on our own. We really don’t want to get caught up in others’ navigation.�
Mazda Salomon’s new temporary acquisition, Team Montrail’s John Jacoby was happy to chat for a few minutes in transition. “Yeah, it’s good,� he said. “Michelle just did an awesome ride and John [Collins] is like an ox. It is great to have guys in a team to help take a load off.� Jacoby compares this terrain to central Australia. “It’s brutal! The biking is just so hard and harsh. And the corrugations in the road… My bum is sore… and that’s to put it politely.�
A little on my media team... I've got the pleasure of assistance from Mark Gray in chatting to the teams to collect information. Peder Sundstrom, Alex di Suvero and Craig Dutton are our photographers out in the field. Gawie Niewoudt, a friend from Augrabies, has helped us so much over this weekend. He's been driving us all over the countryside chasing down teams. We've just hooked up with our other helper, Sean Frachets. Gawie is off back to Augrabies today. [Gawie, baie dankie vir al jou hulp. Dit was a plesier om met jou te speel.] Guys, thanks for being out here :) - Lisa
ENDS
SleepMonsters
