Costa Rica Adventure Race
The Costa Rica Adventure Race is Underway
New Release / 25.08.2010
The attraction of Costa Rica’s incredibly varied terrain, equatorial climate and welcoming multisport culture has attracted an international field. Some of the most experienced racers in the world, the likes of Bruno Rey and Jim Mandelli, have taken the chance to race in a new and exiting venue, adding to their list of racing destinations. Others, like Team Explore (Sweden) and Quechua (France), are perhaps looking for the win and a free place on the start line of the World Champs in Spain, but with only a month to go to ARWC they are risking injury or fatigue. Even the World Championship race director, Antonio de la Rosa, is there taking part.
After the usual registration formalities the race began at La Virgen of Sarapiqui at 07.30am and children from the neighbouring High school Claudio Lara Campos joined the teams in the first 1.5 miles of trekking along the main road of this community. A noisy and enthusiastic entourage of vehicles escorted the teams, while the locals greeted them as they passed by. The race was then officially started at Sarapiqui´s bridge, at 8.a.m on the dot. The teams showed a mix of high anxiety mingled with smiles; they know a very tough time lays ahead for all of them.
After a trekking start came a 27.5 mile rafting section along the Sarapiqui river and team QuasarLontra from Brazil were the first to embark, followed by Team Explore with Quechua in third place. However, four hours later after the mountain biking stage it was the Finnish team Multisport.fi who arrived first at 12.05 p.m. local time, followed closely by Explore and Quechua.
Unfortunately the Finnish Omjakon multisport.fi (team 1) has been forced to withdraw from the race. At the second transition earlier today captain Pekka Sorjonen had to abandon the race starting the canopy section, due to health problems that had been affecting him for the past 2 or 3 days. However, Toumas Hallila and Heikki Hihnala have decided to continue on the course unranked. Tonight they were looking strong at checkpoint 11 at around 11:15pm.
After the rafting, mountain bike, and canopy sections all teams arrived at Lake Hule in Rio Cuarto where they travelled through the canyon of Lake Hule Río Cuarto. This task is a very technical one which is made more difficult due to the weather conditions. The major obstacles being rain and mud.
Here the race developed in unexpected ways. Finland Multisport.fi, (team 2) that had remained at the front all day, and while in the 3rd position, decided not to risk the canyoning section at the Laguna de Hule checkpoint and advanced directly to their mountain bikes at 9:45pm. This has changed their time from being just 30 minutes away from the lead to falling back to last place due to the penalty applied. This leaves Finland with little chances to win the first edition of the ARCR.
At the end of a long first day Sweden’s Team Explore continued in the lead by only 10 minutes, with the Colombian team Bosi Zoom Radio at their heels and getting closer at every transition. Local spirits were raised even more by seeing Team Real Costa Rica (team #5) come out in third place at the end of the checkpoint 12, which was the exit of the canyoning section, The team got cheers from the 7 or 8 staff and media team that were standing over the bridge expecting Quechua to come out next. Of course Quechua were not far behind them on the trail.
It has been a very rainy, very humid and sometimes very hot race for day 1, just as we had foreseen. Tonight the 17 team that are still in the competition will ride through 57km of very muddy roads to arrive early tomorrow at Pedacito de Cielo or “Little Piece of Heaven�. Here they start their longest hike of the challenge, a 42km stretch through remote mountains and rivers.
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