<i>One of the teams we featured before the race was Team Four Continents. It was always going to be a hard ask for 4 'strangers' to meet and form a team to take on this particular race and in the end they were beaten by the course.</i><br />
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After coming together for the first time at ‘the end of the world’ in Punta Arenas just days before the race, the Four Continents team of Tasman Lawrie, Pavel Paloncy, Andre Vogel and Paulette Kirby were beaten by the Patagonian wilderness after three days.<br />
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Speaking in Puerto Natales after being transported back from the race course, they revealed the challenges they had and admit they have been won-over by the landscape that challenged them to the extreme. And, at least for some of them, they can’t wait to come back…<br />
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<b>Pavel Paloncy</b><br />
"For me being in Puerto Natales is quite sad. I would be rather still be racing, whatever it takes, and I am disappointed to be here early. One of the things that is special about this race is that it is so wild and so remote but also that it is so long. We expected to be going those nine days, that’s why we went slowly and made stops and three days is a regular race and we wanted to get something special. We got something special with the terrain, but not the length! The experience of being here, you cannot get anywhere else. For me this has given me a giant motivation to come back here, whether it is with the same team or a different team. In these three days I got to love this area because this is what you cannot experience anywhere else."<br />
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<b>Paulette Kirby</b><br />
"We still have lots of energy and I would rather have gone further and been able to finish with everybody and maybe part of the course cut out because it wasn’t that we don’t have energy left. We would have still loved to kayak and bike and maybe got cut out of the trekking section. It’s disappointing to be out and to be missing all the rain and the lakes and the water and the wilderness."<br />
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<b>Andre Vogel</b><br />
"We would definitely rather be out there. We’d rather be still going and even still going if we were in a bit of a pain. We struggled to make the next checkpoints but that’s part of it. It’s hard to be here knowing there’s still five days of racing going on. It’s a big challenge. The decision to stop wasn’t made by us, that’s why it’s disappointing. The problem was our times were too slow for the cut-off times, so we weren’t making the checkpoints. We made it to checkpoint six. We were travelling quite slowly but we were safe. The navigation wasn’t a problem, but the terrain was slowing us down significantly."<br />
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<b>Tasman Lawrie</b><br />
"The bike and the kayak legs were perfect. We had some injuries on the bikes because of the wind gusts, but the trekking killed us a bit because we started just on dark and all the teams had navigation troubles in the trekking leg. Even Dancing Pandas, who were two hours ahead of us, they backtracked and we met up with them. There were six teams trying to get through. We were down on a river, we couldn’t get up a gorge, we couldn’t get across the hills then at 4:30am we just went to sleep because we were just going around in circles. As soon as we woke up two hours later we found a way through and just took off. It was very difficult at night, extremely difficult."<br />
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<b>Andre Vogel</b><br />
"Three days is a short time. We only had that time to develop ourselves. We had trouble with two river crossings, we had to use the rope and that slowed us up. We were trying to find a better way to cross because it was really strong. Then we had the big river crossing, where we had kayak assistance. A team before us capsized their kayak and were swept out to sea. Andre is a good kayaker and he swam across with no clothes then picked us up in a kayak and we did it in 30 minutes."<br />
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<b>Andre Vogel</b><br />
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"It’s the best race I’ve ever seen, the toughest race I’ve ever seen. The last wild race. I’ll be back. I’m not sure which team we’ll have but hopefully we’ll be back next year or hopefully the following year but we’re starting to plan for it. We have to try and finish this!"<br />
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<b>Pavel Paloncy</b><br />
"Even though I was here for just three days of racing, I’m glad to be here. Hopefully I will be here again next year, some other year, I don’t know what year but some other year."
[To get an idea of the winds that can affect racers in Patagonia see the video clip on the next page ... ]
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