The Sting in Stirling
The Course in the Making
Rob Howard / 19.08.2012
As the teams went through registration in the sports hall I sat down with Course Planner Nick Gracie to look over the route he’s prepared with the Open Adventure staff for this race. (The full race fly over video is now online.)
Nick is a member of the adidas TERREX team and a former World Champion, with a decade of experience at international races around the world, and has worked on this course for many years with the aim of bringing expedition racing back to Scotland in Olympic year. Later on at the teams briefing he explained the idea began 5 years ago, when London won the Olympic bid. He thought this was the year to put on a special race in Scotland and Open Adventure agreed. They began preparations 3 and a half years ago and have since made 12 site visits (often with snow on the hills and in the case of the canyoning to test it out during winter) to prepare the course.
With races of this kind the job is not just about taking teams where he wants them to go – it involves local politics and complex land access negotiations, a lot of preparatory testing of the route, and decisions have to be made within a race budget. In total the race staff have spoken to almost 50 landowners to get access permissions and they faced many obstacles.
Originally they wanted to go further north, onto the high Cairngorm Plateau, but this area of National Park is environmentally very sensitive and despite many meetings over a period of a year it proved impossible. Elsewhere they received sterling support from estate owners and managers, despite it being a difficult time of year. It is shooting and fishing season, and both are big business, and there are out of bounds areas as a result, but the key estates were accepting and encouraging – and this even included the Balmoral Estate. This is the Royal Family’s residence in August, but the estate still allowed some access to facilitate the course.
Another factor which comes into the race planning are the transitions, which the race was keen should offer shelter and also hot food. “I think having some hot food can make a real difference to teams,” said Gracie, “and in 5 places we’ll have hot meals for teams. When I’m racing it’s what I’d like to see and teams will need to carry less food.”
Perhaps the key factor in the course planning was the concept of using a ‘score’ course – which means designing it with various short course options, and sections where checkpoints are optional. Gracie explained what he hoped to achieve. “We want to give all the teams the chance to get to the finish line and achieve as much of the course as possible,” he said. “In an ideal race (and with good weather) I would hope a quarter of the teams might complete the full course, but certainly 5 of 6 of them should do so.”
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