Primal Quest Badlands
Orion are the Winners
Team Orion Health / 21.08.2009
It is expected (but not yet official) that when final time credits and penalties have been applied and confirmed OrionHealth.com will also be able to add "Primal Quest 2009 Champions" to that resume too.
It has been an incredible final leg to what has been a truly magnificent course - Brent Edwards described it in the post race interview as "the best course I've ever done" which is high praise from an adventure racer who has now experienced racing in at least seven different countries on a number of continents.
The final 112 mile epic bike leg commenced after an equally epic trek through the Badlands - a trek which showed how skilled OrionHealth.com can be on the navigation as they managed to efficiently traverse sections of the course at night that saw some teams even in the daylight spending plenty of time in baffled confusion.
Despite very sore feet (not surprising after spending a massive amount of time on them during the Custer State National Park trek and the Badlands trek from the end of the Cheyenne River paddle through to the town of Interior) -OrionHealth.com had finished this trek with an impressive 10+ hour lead over the next team, Salomon Crested Butte (SCB). Onto the bikes and based on previous bike legs it seemed likely that this lead would be held through to the finish line. However, this did not take into account the difficulties OrionHealth.com were to experience in the night as they struggled to find a specific track they believed to be mandatory.
The SPOT tracker shows the team moving forwards and backtracking repeatedly as they tried first one trail and then another (both frustratingly mimicking the general shape/direction of the one they sought). In the end - after a period of multiple hours - the team retraced their course back to their original approach line and finally located the elusive trail and set off towards Rapid City.
This huge loss of time had allowed SCB and fellow New Zealander Neil Jones - racing for Merrell/Zanfel Adventure (MZ) - to significantly close the gap on the leaders and the race was truly "on" - not only for second and third place (as had been the case since the Cheyenne River paddle) but also for the outright win.
SleepMonsters
