2016 XTrail Altay Expedition
Thule Adventure Win the First X-Trail Expedition Race in China
Rob Howard / 27.09.2016
Swedish team Thule Adventure crossed the line to win the first X-Trail Expedition Race in the pouring rain in the middle of the night in the town of Altay in the far North of China.
The team of Martin Flinta, Samuel Clark, Corrinne Smit and Rickard Norlin took 36 hours 16 minutes 54 seconds to complete the 300km course, racing non-stop through two nights in a closely fought race. It was so close that when they crossed the line they immediately asked, “Did we win?” When they got the answer the celebrations began.
From the outset the race had set off at a blistering pace, and for much of the middle part of the course Thule Adventure, Team Red Bull and Haglofs Silva were racing almost within sight of each other. On the second long cycling stage of the race and following an abseil challenge Team Red Bull finally managed to break away a little, but soon after took a disastrous wrong turn. It was mistake they never recovered from and after long, dispiriting hours in the night searching for CP27 they finally gave up and headed directly to the finish line. (Many other teams had problems here too.)
At the time this left Haglofs Silva narrowly in the lead, and in position to scoop the first place prize pot of $20,000, but in the dark they too lost the track by which time Team Adventure Medical Kits of the USA has moved into second, almost catching Thule. However in the final stages the Swedish team pulled away to complete their win and an impressive treble after recent wins at the AR European champs in Spain, and the World Multi-sport champs, also in China.
Haglofs Silva came in third to give Sweden two teams in the top 3, and in the end there was only 18 minutes between the top 3 teams! The Estonian ACE Adventure Team were 4th and the NZ Adventure Team 5th to round out the cash prize winners and a very international top 5.
The remaining teams are out on the course trying to complete the race, which has a cut off time of 65 hours and is organised by x-trail, a new adventure and events company in china. The race has had assistance from the AR World Series and is an ARWS exhibition event this year and looks set to join the series next year.
You can see the full results and follow the teams still on the course at http://live.arworldseries.com/xtrail/index-en.htm
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