AR European Championships – Navigation, Support and Tactics

Rob Howard / 29.04.2014

Teams are starting to arrive at the Sun City Hotel in the resort town of Oludeniz, near Fethiye, on the Mediterranean coast of South East Turkey for this year’s AR European Championships. The race is hosted by the Lycian Challenge organisation and for the majority of the teams this is the first time they have raced in Turkey.

The teams will register at the hotel today (April 29^th) and collect their maps and the SPOT trackers. The maps in use are 1;25.000 scale and the sample map which teams have already seen shows a key which is in both Turkish and English, which will be helpful. Those who have raced here before say the maps are challenging (outdated) and expect navigation to play a critical part in the race ahead. Some of the world’s best AR navigators are racing and I’m sure they are looking forward to the challenge.

Although teams will be given the maps today, and the briefing will be tonight, they won’t be given the checkpoint locations until tomorrow morning – so there will be lots of guessing going on, especially as they know a fair bit about the course already. Pre-race information has not been too tightly controlled for this event.

Teams have a schematic and profile of the course which shows a point to point event, taking them from the coast up into the Taurus mountains on a course with plenty of ascent and descent on the route. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the highest peaks in the region rise to over 3700m. The area also has Karst limestone features, underground rivers and major cave systems.

The route includes two ropes stages, the second being a waterfall descent, plus a canyoning section, and there are both river paddling (inflatables) and sea kayak stages on the course.

There are two major transitions which will act as hubs for short, out-and-back stages.  There are 3 stages from each transition (cloverleaf style), and teams will face choices on how much of the course they attempt, so tactics too will be interesting  (Though that will only be the case for the lead teams if they are unable to complete all of the course.)

There are 55 checkpoints in all, which do have to be taken in the order given, but are not all mandatory. In this respect it is a score event with the team taking the most CP’s winning, and time only coming into play if there is a tie. (To be ranked teams have to get a minimum of 33 checkpoints.) This is going to give teams plenty of choice, but may make the race confusing to follow.

Although the race was initially thought to be unsupported, the pre-race newsletters have stated teams can have a supporter, but at the TA’s only.  Those teams who can organise one will have an advantage with food, tents and gear sorted for them as they come and go, and this could be critical too.

Following the opening ceremony the race will start tomorrow (April 30^th) at 11.00.  Rob Howard will be reporting live from the course for SleepMonsters, but advance information is that internet and phone connections are very limited so reports and photos will appear ‘as and when’.

You can follow the tracking and news on the race website at http://www.lycianchallenge.com/ing/default.asp   

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