Salomon X-adventure World Series
The Rules
Rob / 17.02.2002
Teams must be mixed and are made up of 4 members, including one reserve/substitute. They are also allowed a driver for their assistance vehicle, which has to transport the reserve and all their equipment around. (On the narrow roads in Snowdonia this may be a tricky job. If the support vehicle is late teams could have no bikes or canoes to continue on. The back-up is a critical job.)
A team of 3 must complete each stage (its not a relay – they all do everything), but the reserve can swap in and out at the assistance points along the route. If there is only one woman team member she can miss 3 stages (so the team is not mixed on those). Tactics plays an important role here.
The race is broken into distinct stages, which are all timed separately, and there may be checkpoints along the way. There is an assistance point at the end of each and the winners are the team with fastest combined time. Slower teams can opt to miss a stage in order to keep up, or may be forced to if they miss cut-off times set by the organisers.
There are time penalties for things like missing bits of specified equipment or not showing race numbers, and these are sometimes a significant factor in the overall results as tired teams make mistakes.
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