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Wilderness Traverse are the Winners

Rob Howard / 30.07.2011

Team WildernessTraverse.com have completed their outstanding win of this year’s Raid The North Extreme, winning a place in the AR World championships in Tasmania in October. Judging by their performance here they will be a force to be reckoned with. They lead from start to finish, with no other teams threatening their lead, or even coming close, and that on a course which was clearly very challenging. (It looks like only 6 teams will complete the full route from 30 starters.) They crossed the line at 04.19 on July 29th, some 8 hours ahead of second placed Team Wild Rose, who were in turn another 10 hours ahead of DART-Nuun-Sportmulti, who were the top US team.

The winning team are named after the race organised by team captain Bob Miller, who has been at the forefront of Canadian racing for over a decade, competing at international events all over the world, many of them in the AR World Series, including a win in last Untamed New England Adventure Race (with team GUATS Adventure). Miller is an experienced captain and navigator led a mixed Canadian/New Zealand team to this win.

His fellow Canadian on the team is Jakob Van Dorp, who is a much more recent convert to adventure racing, coming from a background in cross country skiing and quadrathlon.. He came to prominence in Canada by smashing Andrew Cameron’s 7 and a half hour record in the Guats Logs, Rocks and Steel (LRS) Multisport Race … by 2 hours! Since then he has raced the Speights C2C twice (9th and 12th), and the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge (8th), so this win is a significant one for Van Dorp.

The two kiwis on the team are Sarah Fairmaid and Gordon Blythen. Fairmaid lists many big races on her CV, including Abu Dhabi, Wulong and Southern Traverse, and holds numerous Multi-sport records in new Zealand. She is no stranger to mixed international teams, having raced with Polish team Speleo Salomon in ARWC in Brazil, and the all female team Atenah. The same could be said for Blythen, who has finished second in the Coast to Coast, and twice second in Abu Dhabi, so he’s going to be happy to put a first against his name in the World Series.

At the time of writing only 4 teams have been recorded as finishing (Atmosphere Momar taking 4th), and most of the those continuing on the various short course options are still making their way towards the finish line.

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