Celebrations and Commiserations

Rob Howard & Anne-Marie Dunhill / 21.09.2012

On the 6^th night of Raid in France there were mixed fortunes for the leading teams, with congratulations, relief and joy for the finishers, and tears, pain and frustration for several teams who came so far but could not make it to the finish line.

Team Silva of Sweden finished in third place on Thursday afternoon, pleased to take a podium place at the World Champs again, but a little frustrated not to have done better and to have had their race affected by a missing checkpoint.  This team is one of the most consistent international performers over many, many years, and with Thule Adventure ahead of them half of the racers in the top 3 teams were Swedish.

Just as dusk fell and the lights of the Riviera coast began to show, the first all French team came into shore to prolonged applause.  Raidlight Canoe Evasion enjoyed their finish line chat, food and photos, though Sonia Furtado was cold and shivering and had her official finish photo taken while wearing a gold emergency blanket.  She said the race was very hard, especially the water sections as she gets so cold.  “I struggle to get my team to understand how cold I get in the water,” she said. “every water stage is like going into battle for me!” 

Shortly after midnight Vibram Lafuma finished in 5^th, followed soon after by Raidlight LSN, making 3 (and a half) teams in the top 6, so a good result for the home nation.

This was some welcome good news after disappointments for them earlier in the day.  Raid Quechua, who had been racing in the top five were within 4 hours of the finish when Frank Gorry suffered a bad crash on his bike and had to be taken to hospital to be checked out.  It was another blow to the team and Rudy Gouy said, “We feel jinxed at the World Championships, at some time our run of bad luck will have to end.”

Another top French team to pull out near the end of the race were Ertips when David Barranger needed medical support for severe dehydration.  This is becoming a problem for many teams, who, according to the medics, are not drinking enough when cold in the night – then in the day time it is cruelly hot, even more so now teams are coming down to the coast.  Sam Clarke of Tecnu Adventure Racing was in similar problems on the last big trek in the Mercantour National Park.

“He was sick and throwing up all the time,” said Kyle Peter, “and we stopped for almost a full day to try and allow him to recover.  We did set off again, but had to go back and he was put on a drip, so we were out of the race.  As we came here to be competitive, aiming at a top 5 place, the rest of the team decided not to finish the race.

“His race food didn’t arrive and I think he wasn’t looking after himself well enough and maybe lacking experience and not asking for help from us enough.  He’s young ... and a bit hard headed.” 

The next team to reach the finish line were Columbia Vidaraid ... but they didn’t get to finish – not yet.  The Spanish team had missed a checkpoint on the final short trek and had to turn around, paddle back around the headland, and go back up hill to fetch it, before finally returning to finish later next morning.  It is hard to imagine how they must have felt when they were told of their mistake, and impressive that they had the resolve to go back out!

This allowed another Swedish team, FJS, to finish in 7^th place.  This team are always strong finishers, though team captain Daniel Hansson said they had a tactic to take sleep early on this time and the final part of the race was really tough as they struggled to stay awake and concentrate. 

This echoes a comment from Nathan Fa’avae yesterday, when he said he felt the final part of the race was very difficult – a real sting in the tail on a World Championship course that was already very tough.

This is making any race finish here an even greater achievement.  Currently there are still 29 teams listed as on the full course.  The rest of the teams still struggling onwards will be swept up in the various cut-offs over the next couple of days, and it is likely around half of the full course teams will at some point run out of time to go the full distance.

Story by Rob Howard and Anne-Marie Dunhill

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