---

Outdoor Experiences Get Their Timing and Tactics Right

Rob Howard / 03.12.2008

9am Wednesday at Coruche Sports Hall was the closing time for stage 3 section 4 of the race, and this morning deadline would prove critical in deciding the race winners. This was the point at which it became clear strength and speed were not enough to win XPD Portugal, careful strategy was required.

Any team missing the deadline had to ride directly to Assistance Area 3 in Cartaxo, which was the end of stage 3. In doing so they would miss sections 5 and 6 of Stage 3, losing the chance to score 7 ‘mandatory’ checkpoints.

…. the top 6 teams on scoring after stage two ALL missed this critical deadline.

Team Finland, Uge Cyanosis, Buff Coolmax, Castilla y Leon es Vida - SOLE, Navigator Suunto and Adventureteam DK all failed to arrive in time. On stages one and two the top 4 of these teams had scored all the mandatory CP’s, and spent considerable time and effort to reach optional checkpoints, and now they all had to miss the rest of the stage! Race Director Alexandre de Silva later said that this was where the true race began and commented that greed was one of the seven deadly sins! He added that the end of the course, which closes after 100 hours, is also heavily loaded with checkpoints.

Teams which had taken direct routes and missed much of the course were arriving at Coruche before midnight and through the early hours of the morning but as 9am approached the support crews for the leaders could be seen pacing the car park between the sports centre and the local bull ring and anxiously looking along the road for signs of their team.

At 8.55 a team was seen sprinting in and their spirits were raised, but it was not one of the leaders. It was Team Globaz.PT – Polisport of Portugal, who had been in 10th place after stage two. The team were delighted to make it in time and said they’d been racing flat out for the past two hours and it was really important to them. The Polish team Navigtor Suunto arrived at 09.23 and were stunned to be told they had to ride to the end of the stage as they’d not realised there was a closing time to meet.

The Portuguese team were not the first of the top 10 to make it to Coruche however. That was French team Outdoor Experiences, who arrived at 06.54, leaving themselves plenty of time to get all but one of the mandatory checkpoints on the final two sections of the stage and take the lead. Their tactic of racing to meet the 100 hour deadline and concentrating on the ‘mandatory’ checkpoints was paying off, and when the checkpoints were tallied up after stage 3 they had a commanding lead, having moved up from 7th at the end of stage two.

See All Stories On This Race