Saab Salomon reach new heights in Austria

Tim Lloyd (Team Manager) / 17.09.2002

In what was arguably the most competitive adventure race of 2002, Team Saab Salomon staked their claim amongst the world’s best. Their first podium finish on the World stage was all the more satisfying considering the opposition.

Round 4 of the X-Adventure World tour was to be the toughest yet, with the regular teams being joined by some big names, all looking for qualification to the 2003 Raid Gauloises. World Champions, Nokia, current Raid champions VSD Eider, and top Austrian team Briko were among the teams wanting to stake their, but they were soon to find that gate-crashing the X-Adventure party would not be as easy as they would have liked.

The Austria race was also the longest of the year – 250 km in length with some awesome mountain stages and challenging white-water. From the start the Swiss team Allianz Salomon and French champions Intersport were entangled in a battle for race honours, but hot on their heels were Team Saab Salomon (GB), Intersport Extrem (Spain), VS Eider (France), Nokia (Finland) and Briko (Austria). Other top teams such as Spie and Ertips were unable to match the frantic pace of the top 7.

Day 1 was to be very difficult, starting at 6am, with the fastest teams expecting to finish at half past midnight. Team Saab Salomon (Jim Davies, Nicky Davies, Steve Birkinshaw and Pete James, supported by Tim Lloyd and Steve Barnard) were on the pace right from the start, with impressive performances on the opening 2 stages of mountain biking and running. At the second transition they were in 3rd place, the position they were to maintain for most of day 1, but at the end of the day the Spanish team (Extrem) put in a very strong surge to take third at the overnight camp, with Team Saab Salomon 15 minutes behind in 4th.

Teams woke at 5am on day 2 to heavy rain which was to be significant in the TSS result. Stage 1 of the day, the inline skating was cancelled due to the wet conditions, so the day started with a long, high altitude mountain stage. The claggy conditions suited TSS perfectly and this, coupled with Steve Birkinshaw and Pete James’s navigational skills, catapulted TSS to 3rd overall, and gave them an 8 minute lead over the Spaniards. Jim Davies summed up the stage at the transition point. “Steve was on a mission there. We flew down the mountain at a cracking pace.� Praise indeed from one of Britain’s best downhill runners.

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