The AR World Championships - Costa Rica
‘Pura Vida’ at the Adventure Racing World Championships in Costa Rica
ARWS Newsletter / 21.11.2013
If you had to pick a location for a World Championships you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere better than Costa Rica. Where better than a country with its own characteristic phrase, which means ‘full of life”, “this is living” or “real life”. ‘Pura Vida’ is used as a greeting, a farewell, a thank-you and a how-are-you in everyday life in Costa Rica, and that spirit of living the moment perfectly suits adventure racing.
So too does the size and nature of this small Central American country. The race has been billed as running Coast to Coast and Border to Border, so it will span the whole country from North to South and East to West ... or maybe that is South to North and West to East. No one knows until the 700km course is released to the teams after the opening ceremony at the end of the month.
The visiting teams are promised they will experience an unforgettable race, where the terrain, the climate, and team strategy will test them to the limit. The experience of the organizers at the many races they have participated in around the world, combined with the unique environment that Costa Rica offers, guarantees a great race environment in a country with the motto “Costa Rica: No Artificial Ingredients”.
To complete a clearly defined journey is a characteristic of all great adventure racing courses; it’s easier to be motivated to undertake a point to point journey and the finish is all the more satisfying. Another part of any great course is diversity, racers and course planners seek out routes that present the greatest challenges and that requires varied terrains and climate, as well the best locations for the different sports disciplines.
No country is more diverse than Costa Rica. Its official! The often quoted statistic is that Costa Rica encompasses over 5% of the world’s biodiversity, in a land mass that is 0.03% of the planet’s surface. That includes quarter of a million insect species, 10% of the world’s butterflies and a whole lot of monkeys and humming birds!
Wildlife encounters will surely be part of the experience of this race and so too will a variety of landscapes, vegetation and climate. The race takes place at the start of the dry season, but there may still be heavy rains, and temperatures could range from tropical heat and humidity to freezing conditions as the race climbs to an altitude of 3,800m. The climates differ between the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts and in the central highlands, so the racers need to be prepared for anything and everything – they have even been warned earth tremors are common in Costa Rica.
The coasts will offer the chance for beach treks, coasteering and ocean paddling, and there are sure to be rafting and ropes stages in the jungle, maybe cloud canopy trekking too. Costa Rica is so well suited to adventure sport all these activities are part of the regular tourism experience, and tourism is now the country’s main source of income.
So adventure racing will feel very at home in Costa Rica, and 65 teams are going to arrive for the journey of a lifetime. The participants come from 25 different nations and they will gather in the capital San Jose from November 29th, with the race itself taking place from an undisclosed starting point on December 2nd.
The teams have been warned the race course will hark back to the early expedition style races and will be a journey befitting a World Championships – it is going to be tough. This is all the more appropriate as Costa Rica was the location for the second Raid Gauloises in 1990, and it was an article on this race which inspired Mark Burnett to start Eco-Challenge. They used dugout canoes in that race in 1990 ... so maybe the 2013 race will repeat the experience?
The leading teams are expected to take 5 days to finish the course but the past 3 editions of the Costa Rica Adventure Race have shown just how hard it can be to race in Costa Rica, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the winners took longer. Even very experienced teams have found in past races that racing continuously in this country can lead to race ending heat exhaustion and foot care problems.
So experience will be important, and there are some members of all the 3 past winning teams taking part. Mikael Lindnord is captaining the Axa adidas team from Sweden and he was the winning team captain at the first race in 2010. Then in 2011 it was the Columbia SPOT team who won, and the defending race champions are Tecnu Adventure Racing from the U.S.A. Currently Columbia Vidaraid are 4th in the World Rankings and Tecnu are 5th, so both will hope their experience in Costa Rica will help them get onto the podium.
The top 3 World Ranked teams are all entered, and will no doubt be in most people’s minds the race favourites. The defending World Champions are Team Seagate of New Zealand, a title they won in the Southern Alps of France last year, and they have had an impressive year of racing leading up to the World Championships. This included a win at the Godzone race on home soil and a closely fought second place at EcoMotion in Brazil (where they lost out to Columbia Vidaraid).
Second ranked Haglofs Silva of Sweden were the winners at Expedition Africa in the Drakensburg mountains back in May and are one of the most consistently successful World Championship teams, while Swedish/French team Thule Adventure were the World Champions in 2011 in Tasmania.
Other World Series winners from this year include Ecuador Explorer, adidas Terrex Prunesco of the UK, Mountain Designs from Australia and Team Bones from the USA. (Bones are another team with a lot of experience of racing in Costa Rica, while the adidas team includes Jari Kirkland from the USA, who has raced there before.)
There are many other strong teams taking part too of course, some with decades of racing experience, others with youth on their side, and although it is very rare in adventure racing for the established teams to be beaten, there is always the possibility of a surprise result.
What is guaranteed is that all those who take part, from the first to the last finishers, will experience Costa Rica in a way no other athletes or travellers ever have.
You can find out more about the race and follow its progress from the race website at http://www.arcostarica.com and there will be live coverage including GPS team tracking, news, photos, video and social media updates.
For social media updates follow;
Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/ARcostarica
Twitter; #arwc2013
For more information on the AR World Series please see www.arworldseries.com
SleepMonsters
