The Three Peaks Yacht Race
British Army Win The Tilman Trophy
Rob Howard / 10.06.2014
The British Army team have finished second in the race and won the prestigious Tilman Trophy for all round performance. Their Ben Nevis runners crossed the finish line at 00.39 to complete the race, to be greeted by a crowd of marshals and the teams from Wight Rose and Moby J.
For this final mountain they changed the plan and skipper Will Naylor put on his training shoes to run with John Adeney, so all 5 of the team made it to a summit during the race. Naylor has completed ultra marathons in the past, and has previously climbed Ben Nevis, but said on his return, “Four miles training a week is not enough!” Despite the lack of preparation and the difficult conditions on the mountain the pair managed a time of 5 hours 13 minutes. They said, “There was no visibility on top and running through the snow in trainers was not ideal, but we just managed to get off the snow in the very last of the daylight.”
The team can expect to win more trophies too as they had the fastest sailing times on the first two legs and may yet win all 3. They thought they had about an hour lead on the final sail at one point but were impressed with the tenacious sailing of Wight Rose who closed them down.
When they finished the runners from Moby J were on Ben Nevis and they’d passed each other going in opposite directions. Chris Perry was still suffering from his trapped nerve injury which flared up on Scafell Pike, but determined to complete the race. “I did offer to go and thought I could get round in 6 hours,” said Skipper Martin Pound, “but Chris was determined to go ... thank heavens!”
On the way to the finish now are Mistral and Denebola, who are close together. Mistral’s runners are in with a chance of winning King of the Mountains for the best run time on all 3 mountains, but are going to have to run in dark, wet and very windy conditions on Ben Nevis. To win they need to set a time of 3 hours 21 minutes ... and the runners from Wight Rose took 3 hours 18 minutes.
Denebola of Belgium have once again overtaken Mach 5 of Switzerland to be the leading international team. There is a trophy for that of course – most teams win a trophy in this race one way or another!
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