Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race 2010
Excitement is Building
Will Gray / 08.02.2010
Right now, things are looking good. The skies are blue, flashed with a few white clouds, and the incessant wind has, for now, died down. But that can all change in an instant - and when the teams arrived it was a very different experience indeed.
When defending champions Helly Hansen Prunesco, fresh from a fly-by in Santiago with their prune manufacturer sponsors, bumped down on the Punta Arenas tarmac in pouring rain they got an immediate flashback. “The rain was whipping down on the airplane windows and it was horrible outside,� said Bruce Duncan. “We just looked at each other and thought ‘what are we doing’?!� Out the airport, they were greeted with the paparazzi and they have been in high demand thanks to the importance of this event to the whole country of Chile.
A day later, they were with all the teams watching as a helicopter performed an air-sea rescue on the very edge of possibility. Pitching above swollen, white-capped seas the performance was spectacular – and gave the teams a little taste of what to expect!
A few teams have already had a challenge just to get here. Japanese team East Wind missed their flight in Santiago after travelling half the world to get there – but the excited team made it in time for the pre-race training and competence checks. Team Nord Water, from Scandinavia, and Herbertz, from Germany, meanwhile, had an exciting time when their plane had to turn back because of a broken window. They made it through, but one of the Germans failed to make the opening ceremony.
This year’s opening ceremony was held last night in the new Dreams Casino, a swanky hotel on the waterfront, and it was spectacular. Hundreds of people attended and were welcomed first by the race sponsor, Wenger, whose Chief Communications Officer Dennis Piretra put it perfectly: “The purity of the challenge that lies before the teams is very special and in today’s day and age, very unique. The prize is not monetary, the prize is pride and glory. This spirit of this race harkens back to times that were very different and people sought adventure not for financial gain, but to feed a primal need for discovering the unknown and finding our personal limits.�
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