Four Winds USA Supreme
4 Winds Winners – By Over a Day
Rob / 20.08.2003
A bit stunned by this overwhelming win he said, “I don’t know what to say.“ ….. Then he continued, “It’s bizarre, we were under no pressure, so we took a long time at transitions and had much more sleep than we normally would, about 2 hours a night. I’d love to say we’ve turned into some super-elite team, but I think we were just much more experienced than the rest.�
“We raced with the short course teams over the first couple of days, and only 2 of those beat us, but it wasn’t that fast. Yet the other teams in the full race thought we’d gone out far too hard and were sure to blow up. That was inexperience on their part, we just had a huge lead to play with after that.�
The team finished in the dark at around 11pm on Tuesday, after more than 5 days on the course. They came into Park City, Utah, lights blazing after a furiously fast downhill of several thousand feet on which all but Ski Sharp crashed. Chris McSweeny was flying a Union Jack, and Helen Jackson said it had been nice holiday. Keith Byrne was very soon discussing with their support crew how to find beer and pizza. Not that they went short on the race as their support were both full time sponsored North Face athletes who looked after them royally. “They were great,� said Helen Jackson, “one of them has climbed Everest a couple of times and THEY were looking after US!�
They’d had their adventures and some frustrations on the course, which involved a lot of out and back routes, and some time in Park City itself. Asked about the urban scavenger hunt on in-line skates Keith Byrne said, “It was a fun distraction. The main street is on a big slope and letting inexperienced skaters loose on the main highway was dangerous, for pedestrians too. The Go-Lite team were running around in stocking feet and carrying their skates, they thought they’d get run over otherwise.�
“The maps were a challenge,� said Ski Sharp. “Some were as old as 1955 and the reservoir we were kayaking on wasn’t even on the map!� He had gone out early to train as a powered parachute pilot, but in the end the organisers played safe and didn’t let the racers fly solo. Instead they rode tandem with a pilot fly them and carried out navigation exercises. Maybe that was just as well. His pilot was very experienced but a gust of wind crashed them into a nearby truck at 25 mph on landing. Luckily neither of them was hurt.
SleepMonsters
