Wenger Czech Adventure Race
Racing to the Finish at the Czech Adventure Race
Press Release / 10.09.2016
After 50 hours and 50 minutes of racing, Czech team Salomon-Suunto arrived to the finish line as winners. It was fairly unsurprising, their lead continually grew and finally they won by almost seven hours. Their performance was controlled and they managed to eat when they needed to and rest for how long they needed to. They even grabbed a beer on the way.
The orienteering section turned out to be very hard. Salomon-Suunto managed to get through in 3 hours and 10 minutes, but the following quartet of teams competing for second place came at night. It proved much more difficult to navigate at night and times varied from four to six hours. It was a hard one, but competitors at least got a beautiful view of the Kašperk castle.
From the orienteering section teams continued to Nicov, where teams had access to their boxes. The way there seemed to be easy, but it was a descent back to Sušice and a big ascent to Šumava. It was much harder than it looked at the map.
From Nicov teams continued to the trekking stage which lead them twice to 1100 meters. First to Javorník, which they already visited, and second to Zadov. One checkpoint of the stage was in a cave where teams had to find five controls. Ivana from the Kompar XStream team told us that they split in the cave. She climbed to one section when a stone fell to her hand in which she carried her headlight. So she finished up in the cave with a sore hand and no light. Fortunately, her teammate followed her and found her quickly.
At least the final stage was easy. It begun with one more ascent, but then there was a long descent. The final checkpoint of the race was a rope ascent and decent and then … the finish, champagne and celebration.
The group of four pursuers split. The Polish team took second place especially thanks to their performance in the final trekking stage. On the other hand team EPO OjOj had to withdraw from the race as one of them got sick. They tried to continue, but it was not possible and he had to withdraw from the race. Team finally finished incomplete.
Very experienced teams Kompar XStream and EXIT Team found themselves racing for the third place. Both teams had members who had competed in 12 editions of Czech Adventure Race. And both teams started at the end of chasing group only to find themselves in a position for podium.
Finallythen Kompar XStream team was the luckier one. They arrived to the final rope ascent and descent earlier and left by the time only half of the Exit team had completed the task. They raced hard to the finish. Jan from the team later told us: “I was riding first and I saw headlights behind me”. I thought thenEXIT team was with us and pursuing and so I pedaled harder and harder. Luckily, it was just my teammates”.
The final two teams in the race, Moravští vrabci (Moravian Sparrows) and Běhal v dešti (He runs in the rain) found themselves more than twelve hours behind the podium race. But their race was also hard. They met at least 10 times. Finally Běhal v dešti defeated Moravští vrabci by an hour. Moravští vrabci arrived only 30 minutes before the race closed.
SleepMonsters
