Mild Seven Outdoor Quest
Montrail Fly, Saab Salomon Sink
Jackie Yu / 11.12.2003
In second place, one minute and eighteen seconds back, was pre-race favorite Nike ACG. Team New Zealand and Seagate NZ were close behind. “Ideally it would have been nice to win,� said Nike ACG team captain Mike Kloser, who woke this morning suffering from nausea. Kloser was weak and pale at prologue’s end. “But we just wanted to make the top four.�
That top four finish was pivotal. Montrail, Nike ACG, New Zealand, and Seagate NZ will be given a thirty-second head start over the other twenty-two teams during tomorrow’s first official day of competition. “Top four is huge,� agrees Rusch.
The Outdoor Quest is a four-stage adventure competition. Each team is made up of four athletes, comprising either one member of the opposite sex or a member over 45 years old. Teammates must stay together at all times and be proficient in seven different adventure disciplines – trail running, mountain biking, abseiling and climbing, whitewater rafting, kayaking, inline skating, and team biathlon. The team with the lowest cumulative time after Sunday’s final stage will take home the lion’s share of the $200,000 (US) purse.
The theme for 2003 is From the Top to the Tip, in reference to a course that will ask competitors to summit steep Mount Kinabalu, Southeast Asia’s highest point, during the 69-kilometer first stage. The race will conclude at the end of Borneo’s northernmost peninsula. “It’s a race that favours runners and paddlers,� says defending champion Steve Gurney, of Team New Zealand.
Gurney says there’s a palpable competitive tension surrounding this year’s Outdoor Quest. The terrain will be daunting. The equatorial heat will be like an inferno. But more than anything, the field is comprised of so many elite teams that the pace will be painfully furious from start to finish. “The strategy will be simple: go hard at the start, go harder in the middle, then finish with a sprint,� he says with an air of anticipation.
Nike ACG figures to be the team to beat. In addition to the 44-year old Kloser, who has won almost every major adventure race in the world, the squad features mountain running champ Danelle Ballangee, veteran Keith Murray, and former duathlete Michael Tobin. However, Kloser isn’t looking beyond the first stage. “Tomorrow we should be strongest,� is all he will predict, making reference to the run up Mt. Kinabalu.
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