Beast of Ballyhoura
Team Czech AR Win The Beast of Ballyhoura
Rob Howard / 05.08.2014
The final results for The 2014 Beast of Ballyhoura are now out and as expected the Czech AR Team are confirmed as the winners. They were comfortable and very impressive winners too, as their final points total was 280 more than their nearest rivals, and their adjusted race time was perfectly within the 40 hour time limit at just 39.54.30.
The team of Pavel Paloncy, Dan & Filip Silar, and Kristyna Skalicka had travelled to the race from the Czech Republic by car with a friend, on a trip which will also include next week’s AR World Series race – the 500km ITERA in Wales. They found their ‘warm up race’ harder than expected, but adjusted well to the vagaries of the Irish weather and won the race with a tactic of hard racing in early stages. Their pace and accurate navigation allowed them to clear the course on Saturday, which all their rivals failed to do.
The points lead accumulated was enough that they could finish the final stages taking only the mandatory controls on a dash for the finish. It was an accomplished performance, but they were not good at everything – they proved poor shots at the archery when under time pressure to finish the course, resulting in them having to complete 3 penalty orienteering checkpoints.
Behind them came the 3 strongest Irish teams, who all had difficult starts with some challenging night navigation on the first stage, resulting in lost time and bonus points. ‘Get No Sleep’ were second with ‘Outfront Events’ third, ahead of Irish Army AR on time after they scored the same points total.
Fifth were another visiting international team, Dutch Adventure, who had a very different tactic to the other leaders. They missed early bonus points to move along the course quite quickly, and this gave them more flexibility later on. They arrived at the finish looking strong, and finished quite early as they took a safety first approach to the timing. At one point in the race Wouter-Dirk Huitzing said, “Maybe we are underestimating ourselves, but then maybe others are overestimating their abilities … we won’t know until the end.”
Their top 5 place shows their tactics were good, and as a bonus they got to complete the canyon descent, which all the other top teams missed as it was closed due to rising water levels before they got there.
Of the 28 starters only 3 withdrew from the race, all due to illness or injury, though a few others were well over the 40 hour time limit and scored an impressive penalty points total. Not that it mattered too much as long as they finished.
The race will return next year, when it will be much longer at 72 hours and will host the AR European Championships.
Watch http://www.beastofballyhoura.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/BallyhouraBeast for more information later in the year.
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