AR World Championship 2005
Into The Finish ... And Out of The Race
Rob Howard / 18.11.2005
The kiwi team arrived in brilliant evening sunshine and watched by a large crowd abseiled off the cliffs onto a small rock island before pulling themselves hand over hand across a Tyrolean traverse above the spray and climbing a short distance to another rope. Walking back to their trailer Richard Ussher told Geoff Hunt, “That was a wicked ropes course!� He added, “It’s great to have that at the end of the course – means our final memories are not of bloody monkey scrub!
Hunt lazed on the grass back at their trailer, watching them pack. “This is a casual gear check,� he said, “I’ll just watch from here and make sure you have everything.� Marcel Hagener was cheerfully playing with two Nathan Fa’avae’s children and taking inner tubes out of his rucksack. “I won’t need these!� he said. Richard Ussher was giving the support crew his order for the finish at the Bay House Café, “Hot chips and beers will do it.� (They’ve booked a room for a party – given that there is a bar/restaurant on this year’s finish line!)
For a while the team didn’t realise they were all packed and ready to go, they were all standing chatting to different people! When Fa’avae said it was time to go they pulled on their filthy race bibs for the last time and set off as dusk fell, with only the run along 9 mile beach to go.
A few miles away on the Buller river it was a different story for the Salomon GB team, who finished their race at nightfall on the river, failing to make the cut-off. At TA9 Bruce Duncan from their support crews stood on boulders at the riverside with two marshals looking forlornly down the river gorge in the gathering gloom. “They are not going to make it,� Duncan said, “but there was never much chance really.�
At 21.00 the marshal’s watch alarm went off and he said, “That’s it!� Team Manager Tim Lloyd said, “They did one of the fastest runs on the previous stage and have only slept 45 minutes in the last 2 days to get this far, but doing the fastest paddle too was too much to ask of them. But they gave it their all!� He added, “Even if they’d carried on they probably could not have finished by the time the course closes tomorrow.�
All that was left for the team to do was to go up river and find the team, bring them back to the TA with their boats to be ‘didymo washed’ and go back to town to get some hard earned sleep.
SleepMonsters
