Czech Adventure Race 2011
Czech adidas Terrex are European Champions
Jan Smolik / 20.08.2011
It was the only full trekking stage of the race that decided it. Sixty five kilometers of walking at the end of the reace proved to be the most difficult of the challenges and too difficult for some. Czech Adidas Terrex and Accom/Nutrend/Merida started the stage in a head-to-head fight, but Accom soon started to lose their position. Later on they admitted they had knee injury problems in the team. Once they had lost more than three hours on the trekking stage, they dropped out of the race completely.
It took 13 hours for the fastest team to complete trekking stage, but for many slower teams it was too long. Some teams opted to skip CPs to get to the final stages in time to finish the race.
Rankings at the back of the pack are rather confused as we are not sure who missed what. All will become clear when the organizers read the punch cards of the competitors.
With Accom out of game and three international favorite teams dropped early in the race adidas Terrex had the door to the title open. Alpine Pro were more concerned with situation behind them than with any attempt to attack first place and third placed Tilak/OpaveNet/Merida was far too behind to be a threat.
The penultimate stage was about 70 kilometers of biking to the river. It was fast, mostly on asphalt roads. Only one CP was located in the ruin of the castle, where the map was not very accurate. This was the only risky place for adidas.
The last stage was 27km of paddling with 10 km of orienteering. As there is not much water in the river, it was sometimes necessary to pull the boats between rocks. This was especially true at the Stvoridla section which is not navigable at low levels of water. But with some care and some pushing it was possible to get the boat over.
As adidas Terrex crossed finish line at 20:20, other teams continued. Both Alpine Pro and Tilak had it harder as they had to paddle through Stvoridla at night. At the finish they said they only tried not to hit stones too fast. Both teams however managed to get to the finish line.
When first three teams were already at the finish or at least very close to it, all the other teams had still not reached the paddling stage. They are at least six or seven hours behind the leaders.
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