Adventure Racing World Championship 2016
Thumbs Up For The Shoalhaven Course
Rob Howard / 17.11.2016
Designing any adventure race course is a tough and sometimes thankless job, and a World Championship course is under much greater scrutiny. The course has to test the very best teams, and yet be achievable by the ‘weekend warrior’ teams who want to take part and have a go. (Some would argue that should not be the case at a World Champs, but in the real world it’s the bottom two-thirds of the leaderboard who pay the entry fees to make the race viable for all.)
There are always limitations on what can be done as well. (Permits, vehicle access, costs, local politics, safety, driving distances for logistics and so on, and on.) Race Directors cannot go just where they want, or where the racers might like.
So how has this year’s Shoalhaven course been received by the racers? For the most part it’s had good reviews, 4 out of 5 stars, a thumbs up or a smiley face.
Winning team Seagate commented, “We thought it was a really good course and the length was spot on too. There have been some really long ARWC lately and it’s good to have shorter duration race that tests teams in different ways, short and fast versus long and slow. It took us 7-days to win in Brazil, so 4-days here in Australia makes it a different challenge. The organisation of the event was excellent.”
But you can't please all of the people all of the time and not all of the top teams were so pleased to have a ‘shorter’ course. (It’s all relative.) Some described the first couple of days as a sprint triathlon (Tecnu) and some said longer stages would suit them better (Merrell and Estonian ACE Adventure), while Sabrina Verjee who raced with Raid Gallaecia just said it was “a bit short and easy”.
But if you talk to the majority they’d have a different view and as I write this some teams are still out there on day 8. And the teams who have taken 6, 7 or 8 days are those who seem to have had most enjoyment from all the places they’ve visited.
Some said there was not enough navigational challenge, and maybe for the top teams this is the case ... though even they made some mistakes and went off route. When this point was put to Louise Foulkes she said, “We did want some more open navigation on the treks, but when we tested it out the bush was so thick it was almost impenetrable.” In other words be careful what you wish for.
Some liked the caving stage, others thought the sketch map they had to work from was inadequate (i.e. they got lost), some raved about the pack-rafting, others complained about 12km of flat water paddling at the end of it, but you couldn’t have one without the other! Again, you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
The majority however, were complimentary. “The rafting was amazing,” said Pablo Lopez Franco, “we were many hours in the wilderness with no sight of any buildings or people – a truly extreme place.” Many others said the same. The coastal scenery and especially the high mountain terrain got the same glowing descriptions. Chris Forne of Seagate said, “I couldn’t compare the mountain scenery to anything I’ve seen before. It was definitely a highlight.” Shoalhaven is a winner when it comes to the racer reviews.
All of the racers I’ve spoken to have praised the race organisation, which has worked very efficiently and effectively. The ‘shorter’ stages sometimes put more pressure on logistics as there is less time to move bikes, boxes and boats, but it’s all gone smoothly (one missing Merrell box aside), and all of the CP’s were in the right place (bar one at the end of the course).
More importantly there have been no major controversies or course changes. Course changes can wreck a race and in recent World Championships we’ve seen courses that were misjudged and too long, had too few finishers and too many teams who were short coursed and unhappy. There have been controversies over penalties and timing adjustments due to course changes mid-race, and some resulting from unclear rules and instructions.
None of that has happened this time, thankfully. (In that respect a shorter course is a safer option than a longer one.)
So, its thumbs up for Shoalhaven and the ARWC 2016 course, which seems to have managed to please most of the people most of the time – and that is all you can hope for.
SleepMonsters
