Raid Caneo Nature
Day 2 The Field Divides
DAvid Ogden - International Adventurers / 29.07.2008
The race is being led by WILSA SPORT HELLY HANSEN, despite the fact that they lost their tracking system yesterday and suffered a 1 hour penalty last night they still finished the stage at 6:15 this morning having built up a lead of some 45 minutes during the mountain bike stage. They commented that the stage was longer than expected.
The Raider Classification leaders and second team to arrive was OAHU who walked into the stadium just before 7 AM having missed out on the final mountain bike section.
Many teams are requesting time adjustments for the ride and run stage where the behaviour of the horses affected their progress. British team HELLY HANSEN UK had lost more than 50 minutes on two occassions during the first half of the ride and run stage, at the first stop some 8k into the race when one horse panicked and only calmed down following three injections from a vet, and again some 12K later the second horse stopped and would go no further ... so all the team had to run to the compulsory stop to start the second leg with a new horse which was the reason they became tail-end-charlie and had to race against the clock to continue in the Extreme classification ...
They have appealed for redress which might bring them back into contention with the top 5 teams. Results of pending appeals will be announced tomorrow, prior to the next stage.
The overall classification is still close at the top with 5 teams still in contention and allegations were rife concerning possible contraventions during the night where some teams may have taken a short cut to avoid the route which required bike carrying over and around boulders.
One member of team IMI Groupe completed the stage with a leg injury, but will continue on as they can still kayak and bike and hope their leg will recover before the next running event in Stage 3.
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