Southern Traverse
Drama for Lythgoe
Claire Hathaway / 21.11.2002
Seagate.com are hours away from the finish line of the Southern Traverse. Blenheim is expecting them to paddle up the Taylor River between nine and 10 this morning.
The race is on for second between Lythgoe and Kathmandu. Lythgoe is leading at this stage but a broken paddle that happened between transition area nine and checkpoint 37 this morning could be the destruction of the race for them. Race director Geoff Hunt is on his way to the team with a spare paddle, but it could take him some time to get there. Kathmandu is hot on Lythgoe’s heels and could take this opportunity to steal second from the UK team.
Lythgoe have made incredible time over the second half of the race and stole second from Sportzhub.com late yesterday. They will be determined to overcome a drop-out result from last year. Yesterday they were looking tired, but strong and very determined.
Media manager Margo Berryman says Sportzhub.com’s sleep management may be a reason why they fell off the pace so dramatically yesterday. She says they came into transition area eight at around mid-day yesterday looking very tired and sleepy. Sportzhub’s captain Steve Knowles told her at that stage that they’d only had one-and-a-half hours sleep in total since the start of the race.
US team Gerry Sportswear/Crested Butte have dropped out of the race. One of the team members had to be rescued by medics 2km before transition area five just before mid-day yesterday. He was taken to Blenheim hospital where they established he’d been suffering from hypothermia. He and his team are now safe and well in their hotel rooms.
The middle of the field are in the notorious Richmond Ranges and will be moving onto the mountain bike stage later in the day.
It is raining steadily and it will be the first significant wet period the teams have had to cope with since Tuesday, however this shouldn’t slow these determined competitors down too much.
SleepMonsters
