The AR World Championships - Costa Rica
Four Teams on the Podium
Rob Howard / 09.12.2013
After a race in which they had pressed for the lead, Team Columbia Vidaraid finished second at the AR World Championships, crossing the line as darkness fell. The joint Brazilian/Spanish team had pushed hard on the high mountain trek to join the leaders, then seen race favourites Seagate pull out, but could not make enough inroads into the huge lead Thule Adventure held, although in the end they finished only 3 hours behind them, a small margin in a race of this length.
Team Tecnu and adidas TERREX had been contesting with each other over all of the second half of the course, sometimes one ahead, sometimes the other, and when they met up again at the checkpoint before the final transition they decided to finish together. Mutual respect and sportsmanship overruled self interest, and maybe they had been through so much already they just didn’t want to compete with each other anymore!
The adidas TERREX team had been ahead and going well, but then the derailleur on Nick Gracie’s bike disintegrated and was not repairable, so they ran with the bike to a farmhouse and got lucky. “The owner spoke good English,” said Gracie, “and said he had a bike we could use! It was in good working order but heavy as hell. We got back on the road and managed to catch Tecnu again, but I’m glad I don’t have to ride it anymore, and will have to get my own bike back somehow!”
Warren Bates explained what happened at that final biking checkpoint. “Tom found it and they arrived too, and it as a bit awkward. What do you do? We’ been in this position before in Tasmania and won a race off, and we really didn’t want to do that again! We told them we had 100% record in tight finishes so not to take us on!”
So the two teams agreed not to race to the line, took the canopy zip lines altogether and broke the teams up two and two in the boats. They crossed the line with Karen Lundgren and Jari Kirkland in front – arms raised in celebration and finish 3rd equal.
They were all cold after the rafting at night, and looking forward to some hot food. “We struggled to stay awake on the raft,” said Tom Gibbs, “and it seemed to go on forever – we just wanted to finish!” He added, “This race would have been so much better with good boats, and some slightly shorter stages.”
Despite their high ranking Nick Gracie said, “We had a terrible race. We kept making rookie mistakes like forgetting things and couldn’t believe we were doing them!”
The teams are now being taken to their hotels to warm up and get something to eat, and the podium for ARWC2013 in Costa Rica is complete – with 4 teams on it,
SleepMonsters
