ITERA - Presented by Open Adventure
International Teams Come to Wales for ITERA
Rob Howard / 09.08.2014
The ITERA expedition race has attracted a big international entry, with racers from 13 different nationalities, and with half of the entries being teams with visiting racers.
There are full teams from France (4), Denmark (3), The Czech Republic, Spain, Holland, a mixed South American team and one from the USA. It’s a strong gathering of racers, many with AR World Series experience, and including the strongest and most experienced British teams, all gathered for a coast to coast journey through Wales.
There is one non-competitive (all male) team and that is Sport Aventure who travelled over from France for the event. The rest are all ranked (mixed sex) teams, either racing for a top place and maybe a World Series win, or just wanting to have best experience they can over 5 days in the wilderness of Wales and get to the finish line.
Of the home nation teams adidas TERREX Prunesco are the favourites. Former World Champs and ranked 5th in the world, they are current European AR Series champions and are very rarely beaten on home soil. They also won the previous Open Adventure World Series expedition races, The Sting in Stirling, 2 years ago, and the one 2 years before that in the Lake District in England.
That’s a formidable record of achievement, but I don’t think they’ll have it all their own way in this race – there is some strong competition and it’s a new look adidas TERREX team with Sally Ozanne and Kim Collison joining them from Team Mountain Hardwear.
Perhaps the strongest challenge will come from Team Walhalla – a new team name on the World Series circuit, but with some very familiar faces. Barbara Bonfim and Urtzi Iglesias are regular members of Colombia Vidaraid (world ranked 3) and are joined by racers they’ve known for many years. Argentine racer Daniel Pincu raced with Colombia Vidaraid at Tierra Viva (when they were beaten by adidas TERREX), and has been on the winning team there before, and these 3 are joined by Basque navigator Gustavo Borgognon.
Among the other visiting international teams Spanish team Gallaecia Fridama and Swedish team SWECO are the strongest on form. SWECO are ranked 10th in the world and have several top placed ARWS finishes on their record, while the Spanish team are very active in Gallician and Spanish AR leagues and are led by ARWS regular Pablo Lopez.
There is strong home competition too, most notably from Haglofs Silva UK (not to be confused with Haglofs Silva of Sweden). This is an experienced and fast team, who know Wales well and have raced in top UK teams on and off for many years (including with adidas TERREX).
Another team in good form are Team Czech AR, who won the AR European Series race Beast of Ballyhoura in Ireland last weekend. They drove across Europe to make an extended racing road trip taking in both races, and though they won in Ireland convincingly they did say it was a harder ‘warm up’ than they were expecting!
They did show they can cope well with the variable and wet weather that Ireland and Wales share, but navigator Pavel Paloncy was a little disappointed to find the Irish Ordnance Survey is not the same as the British one! He described the Irish weather as ‘unstable’ and can expect more of the same in Wales.
There are many other strong and experienced teams, all with their ambitions to finish, make the top 10, beat their friends etc. Many of the UK racers are regulars with Open Adventure and know what to expect in the week ahead.
There are others who are motivated to fund raise, including ‘Nile Swimmers’, which is a charity teaching swimming in Africa to reduce drowning deaths. Three of their team raced the Sting in Stirling and they are back for more in Wales. Another fund raiser are ‘Need For Speed’ who are collecting for military charity ‘Help For Heroes’.
All the teams will have their own adventures through the coming week and we’ll be following their progress and talking to as many of them as we possibly can.
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