Swisse Mark Webber Tasmania Challenge
Team Tasmania Make a Move
News Release / 09.12.2011
As the F1 star joined his Red Bull Racing team to collect the laurels for their successful World Championship year, his other team started the day just over an hour behind the overnight leaders, locals Mark Padgett and Mark Hinder of Team Iron House.
But a strong performance across the day’s 91 competitive kilometres, combined with a day of drama for the leaders, saw Andrews and Clarke move to within 31 minutes of the lead.
In second place is the French team of Sebastian Camus and Gaetan Freanndo, Renault-Garmin 1, who are also a real threat to the leaders, now just 23 minutes in arrears after their best day of the event.
Andrews, an experienced adventure racer, was clearly delighted with his team’s day.
“We were quite surprised to see Mark Padgett (Team Iron House) make a bit of an error on the optional bike course and we got a bit of a lead and we haven’t seen many people all day except for the Renault Garmin boys,� Andrews said.
“So, we’ve had a good day, just kept racing our own race.
“We watched the other teams make surges and try to drop us and they went and made navigation errors. This is a long race, with a lot of fatigue, and that influences decision making too."
Andrews knows he is working for an extended team.
“The day he left the race, the first thing I had was a tweet from @AussieGrit, Mark Webber himself, saying good luck today.
“I’ll definitely be sending him a message and tell him how we went today.
“Yesterday I didn’t feel like we had much to report but at least today we can say we’ve made a move, do him a bit proud.�
The Padgett and Hinder combination had a day they would rather forget. On the first leg, an 11-kilometre paddle from Gordon to Bruny Island, the pair had to stop and empty their kayak after taking on water on the crossing.
But things went from bad to worse on the next leg, a 25-kilometre mountain bike to Adventure Bay, when they got lost and finished up bush bashing with their bikes over their shoulders to get back on course. Despite losing an hour, the pair clawed back some of their losses over the final four stages.
AFL Legend, Glenn Archer, who made his name as one of the tough men of his sport, joined the Challenge for the three-day competition.
He crossed the line in 14th place outright, a pleasing result for the North Melbourne champion after his kayak came close to sinking on the first leg.
"We were taking on water and had a full kayak by the end, we couldn’t steer it left or right so we did an extra about 4 kms I reckon.
"AFL pre-seasons are pretty tough but the thing about those is they’re about three hours long. These are 10 hours long or so, so it’s mentally and physically draining.
"It was amazingly hard, I thought I was going to tear a hamstring! It was an amazingly great first day, I enjoyed it immensely. I will now rest up and come out firing tomorrow."
The field tackles arguably the toughest day of the five tomorrow when they take on the rugged terrain of the Hartz Mountains before heading back to Hobart for the final day on Sunday.
<b>OVERALL TOP FIVE</b> – Totals after Day 3 including all penalties and credits (Provisional)

1. Team Iron House – 9h52m06s

2. Team Renault-Garmin 1 – 10h15m22s

3. Team Pure Tasmania – 10h22m53s

4. Team Tasmania – 10h23m59s

5. Team Renault-Garmin 2 – 11h15m49s
SleepMonsters
