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Slowly, Slowly, Catch a Kiwi

Rob Howard / 16.11.2005

The pattern of the past few days has continued during the 3rd night of the race. Once again after a fine evening the weather took a turn for the worse with cold temperatures and persistent rain overnight.

Once again a few more teams dropped out on a long trekking stage. Dave Corner of Supplierpipeline was airlifted off with a knee injury, but his team are continuing unranked. So too are The North Face NZ who couldn’t find CP13 and came down to the TA. “They’d just run out of everything,� said one of their support crew. “They had no strength, dry gear, food or energy left. They just didn’t need another night on the hill and had to get out of there, but are going on now they’ve recovered.� The Japanese team East Wind also withdrew and so did the local Buller team, ‘Solid Energy’, who were racing unranked after missing the rafting. There will be huge disappointment in Westport that they could not continue, but for a novice team they’ve done amazingly well in a world class competition on this course.

Once again Balance Vector extended their lead, riding into TA7 at Capelston at the end of the mountain bike stage in the early morning and leaving for the next trekking stage at 06.42 after an hours sleep.

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