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De Belin finally Cranks it out at Australia’s biggest AR event

AROC Sport / 23.12.2007

Team Crank – Matt De Bellin, Alison Curtin and Matt Shields fought it out for most of the event with AROC regulars Matt Koerber, Mark McDonald and Selina Stoute racing together as TerraX ARNutters. It was not until the final 2 checkpoints on the bonus leg that Crank finally made the break and raced to a deserved win in just over 3.5 hours. TerraX ARNutters ended up over 5 minutes back as Mark McDonald succumbed to cramps and struggled to keep up with the lightening speed these teams had maintained throughout the whole event – even on the 180m climb up to Kincumber Mountain.

The new era of adventure racing has dawned. It was a whole new suite of names and teams that took out the rest of the placings. Jaap Bakker’s Wednesday night orienteering practice paid off and the tall Dutchman took his team Dirty Torquers (Jaap, Peter Wilson, Sarina Tomchin) to a third overall. Meanwhile, local team Barnseys’s Smuggling Wombats (Mark Tucker, Benjy Morris, Dean) took full advantage of their local knowledge and familiarity of the bike trails and hill climbs to win the all male category and 4th overall. After questioning about the team name, Tucker laughed that it referred to their mate who had got them on the adventure racing train - it was a jibe at his growing butt size if he didn’t get training! Mike Sumner, a veteran of adventure racing took the Sydney Northern beaches team First Step to Ventoux (Sumner, Sam Bogaert, Duncan Markham) to second in the male category. They were followed by Gonzo – Paul Carruthers, Andrew McKenzie, David Longman.

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