Raid in France - The Adventure Race World Championships 2012
The Best of the Best Battle it Out
Rob Howard / 14.09.2012
The teams competing at Raid in France for the title of World Adventure Racing Champions have travelled from all across the world and many of them have qualified for their positions on the start line at AR World Series events through the year. These have taken place at 10 locations on 5 continents and all bar one of the winning teams are present in France for the final.
The series winners taking part are Team Ecuador, Seagate (NZ), Team Tecnu (USA/Canada), Team Switzerland, Thule Adventure (Sweden/France), Omjakon (Finland), Colombia Vidaraid (Spain) and adidas TERREX (UK). Three of these are former world champions, and Thule Adventure are defending their world title, won last year in Tasmania, with exactly the same team; Martin Flinta, Per Vestling, Jacky Boisset and Miriam Guillot.
All of these teams will be among the favourites, with Seagate the form team, having just come from a win in China, and as they have won the two World Series they entered this year convincingly. The team were 3rd last year in Tasmania after receiving a 4 hour time penalty when they were leading, and will have a point to prove this time out.
Other race favourites will be French national champions Vibram Lafuma, and Raid Quechua, who have won Raid in France 3 times already. Other French teams including Ertips will be strong contenders and have the advantage of knowing the race and the terrain, as well as the extra incentive to win on home soil. (That is an incentive to the defending title holders too, with two French racers on the team.)
There are strong entries in particular from Sweden and also Denmark and Eastern Europe, but no teams from Australia who hosted the championships last time and only a couple from the USA. In Tasmania last year there were 4 Swedish teams in the top 7 finishers and this time there are 7 Swedish entries trying to repeat that success, including the only all-female team in the race ‘Ducati Bicycles’.
There is a full team list on www.raidinfrance.com and once the race has started early on Saturday morning the live site will allow followers to track news/photos and positions on each team, and show a race leaderboard for positions and satellite tracking from Yellowbrick.
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