Subaru Primal Quest
A Choppy Start
SPQ/Rob / 06.09.2003
Under a beautiful sky throughout the morning, the elite teams travelled about as fast as their boats could go between the start and checkpoints one and two.
A sharp afternoon wind kicked up, however, creating choppy conditions that significantly slowed the teams down as they approached the first transition area at Homewood on the west shore of the lake.
As many predicted, the Kiwi and Aussie teams dominated the paddling section. Team Parallax, captained by last year's SPQ champion Steve Gurney, was the first off the water more than six hours into the race, followed soon after by Teams AROC and Seagate.
When asked of his team's race strategy, Gurney, pulling on dry socks and stuffing fistfuls of food in his mouth, said "get in front and then go harder."
Parallax couldn't go quite hard enough, however, as Team Seagate pulled ahead of the rest of the pack on the next stretch of the course to TA2 at Donner Pass.
Teams were allowed to choose between using roller blades or kick bikes for the section, and while it seems that most of the elite racers chose to rollerblade, Team Seagate opted for the kick bike. Apparently, this tactical decision paid off - though Parallax and Team Nike ACG were close on their heels.
All of the 320 racers made it off the water by nightfall, with the last boat coming in about 7:30 p.m.
Rob’s Race Commentary
No surprises at the start. Australian team AROC have won sprint and weekend races back in Oz(there is nothing longer yet), so may just be going at their usual pace. After a couple of days they will be pushing into new territory.
Otherwise the leaders were as expected after a long paddling stage to start, with the New Zealand teams and racers, and the favourites to the fore.
SleepMonsters
