Raid International Gaspesie
The Race Begins
Rob Howard / 09.09.2016
Raid International Gaspesie began today at the St. Elzear cave which was a couple of hours early morning drive from Carlton Sur Mer, along the coast and up into the forest.
The cave entrance was an almost vertical ladder descent, which had to be roped and with limited space one of each team descended to pick up their control cards from a marshal positioned down the bottom.
There wasn’t a lot of room so it took an hour or so for all the teams to take their turn to go down, and Irish racer Jonny Green of Team Kinsale Adventure told me. “I asked to have a look around and the marshal took me into couple of small caverns which were lit. May as well – I won’t be visiting again!”
This team won an all expenses paid trip to the race in a competition – and they thanked me for seeing the news of the competition on SleepMonsters. Hopefully they’ll still feel thankful at the end of the race!
When I spoke to one of the local teams, Volkswagon/sport BG New Richmond, Simon Mercier said, “I live close by, but have never been here before either!”
Both teams had some misadventure on yesterdays prologue. The Volkswagon team had a bad puncture and although they had a spare inner tube it took 12 minutes to fix. They still finished 6th, which was impressive, and were bounding up and down at the front of the start line – ready to race. The Kinsale team were one of those who missed the CP in the tunnel – and they only realised after reading my report yesterday!
Once everyone had visited the cave it was time to countdown to the start, with race setting off at 10.15 as the morning drizzle turned to heavier rain. (Nothing like yesterday though, when they had a months rain in a day.)
Everyone ran up the track to pick up their bikes and they were on their way on day one of the race!
SleepMonsters
