Explore Sweden
Explore Sweden Makes History
Mia Renz / 09.09.2008
The distance to the finish for the teams were; 4. Tieto Enator Adventure Röd 20km, 5. Multitude Salomon 27km, 6. Lifelivers.com 30km, 7. City Wolfs 43km, 8. Speleo Salomon 46km, 9. FK Herkules 52km and 10. Solvarbo SSF 66km.
TietoEnator Adventure Röd crossed the finish line at 09.38 with a total race time of 3 days 12 hours 38 minutes. Not only did they secure an excellent fourth place, they also won the ADTA challenge; a free entry and tickets to Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge.
Teammember Jeanette Svensson said: \"We are so happy and excited about this prize. It feels really good! Our goal was to complete this race but this is the best bonus. None of us have any experience of long races so we wanted to complete this race as good as possible. We took our time, ate and powered up and did not think about the other teams.\"
Another team member Magnus Albinsson said: \"We are really happy but Abu Dhabi was not our main goal. If we had focused only on the prize if going to Abu Dhabi maybe this race wouldn´t have gone so well. When FK Herkules passed us on the first kayak section none of us even thought or mentioned anything about Abu Dhabi. If we had thought about that then maybe we would have lost our focus on this race. I think it was our strength, that we did not think about Abu Dhabi during the race.\"
We asked teammember Ola Olsson if the race was hard and long enough, since he is known to like races like that? His reply was; \"It was “lagom� (just about right). But the dark zone gave us a lot of sleep. When I ran on the rocks during the Island traverse I thought: why are we doing this? But there was nothing I would rather have done at that moment, it was so cool.\"
Multitude Salomon arrived in 5th place after 3 days 13 hours and 18 minutes. We talked to Anders Hauge after the race and he said: \"It has been great fun on a superb course in excellent weather\". He especially mentioned our Power CP46 as \"skickligt bus!\" (a great suprise) after which the rest of the bike ride was a pleasure.
A cold and wet but happy team Lifelivers.com arrived at the finish line at 12:05 after 3 days 15h 05 min racing. The team missed the recommended portage and paddled parts of the rapid between CP52 and CP53 until team members Caroline and Arvid capsized.
Just 14 minutes later City Wolfs crossed the finish line. \"If we had seen them (Lifelivers.com) on the last lake we should have raced even harder!\" said Thomas Jansson. They re-charged their batteries last night when they were invited in at Barbro and Ingmar Perssons house just south of Bredbyn. The team arrived at the shore by the Persson house and asked if they could put up the tent so close to the house. The couple responded by inviting them in, served pizza, washed their clothes and turned on the sauna. The team were overwhelmed by their generosity.
Throughout the course the teams have mentioned the kindness and support from the locals in this region. The gas station in Ullånger stayed open when they saw on Multisport Live that teams were coming and put on some more hot dogs, the ice cream man on wheels took another route to meet a team and gave them some cones.
Team Speleo Salomon praised the race course when they arrived at the finish line this afternoon after 3 days 16 hours and 56 minutes.
FK Herkules finished the race with an unbelievable sprint up the mountain and down the abseil to the finish line in just 23 min, 7 minutes better than Multitude Salomon. With this fast sprint they won the Section Sprint prize! They finished the race in 3 days 18h 23 min.
When the last team Solvarbo SSF crossed the finish line after 3 days 20 hours and 16 minutes Explore Sweden made history as all teams have completed the course. The team have had their difficulties but kept their spirit and held a steady pace from the ocean kayaking onwards.
With this unique achievement in expedtion racing we close the 2008 Explore Sweden race from the High Coast of Sweden!
SleepMonsters
