Adventure Racing World Championships Humbling World’s Best

Daylight is fast disappearing on day three of the World Adventure Racing Championships on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island. Based around the bush-clad mountains of the Buller River, the dense bush, challenging navigation and West Coast rain has humbled most of this world class field, many of whom are no yet halfway through the five-day, 420k course.

The only team not humbled by New Zealand’s wild West Coast has been New Zealand’s own Team Balance/Vector of Nathan Fa’avae (Nels), Kristina Anglem (ChCh), Richard Ussher (Q’town) and Marcel Hagener (Taupo). This awesome foursome have led from the start in Westport on Monday morning, leaving the world’s best adventure racers in their wake to establish an eight-hour lead with half the race still to run.

Balance/Vector emerged this morning from an epic overnight trek on the Brunner Range. The distance of the trek was only 30k, but the combined challenges of terrain, navigation and night took them 22 hours. “It was a tough stage,” said team captain Nathan Fa’avae. “At one point we mucked around for about two hours just looking for one checkpoint. In the end we decided to sleep for two hours and have another go when we were fresher.”

Despite their own challenges, Balance/Vector added an amazing five hours to their lead. In three days of racing they have slept just three hours. Eight hours behind them, as the race shifted from trekking to mountain biking, the dark horse team so far, New Zealand’s Team Powered By Velvet.com, continue to punch above their weight in second place. Led by noted adventure racing organiser, Richard Anderson, they led a rush of more fancied teams off the Brunner Range. Right now this little known foursome of Anderson, Dean Sisson, Rhys Burns and Koleighne Ford are ahead of the top three teams from last year’s world championship.

Team Merrell/Wigwam, led by American adventure legend Robyn Benincasa but including Kiwi aces Neil Jones and Geoff Mitchell, came through just 6 minutes behind Powered Velvet. Eight minutes behind them came USA’s Team Nike/Balance Bar and Sweden’s Cross Sportswear. These three teams were third, first and second in the 2004 world championship. Just twenty-five minutes after them Sweden’s Team Lundhags Adventure and another Kiwi dark horse, Team Port Nelson of Paul Chaplow, Keith Riley, Tony Bateup and Lisa Savage.

Led by Balance/Vector, Kiwi teams have been impressive against this world championship field. Forty six teams from 40 countries started the race, 16 of them from New Zealand while another half dozen international conglomerates have New Zealanders in them. Of the leading eight teams thus far, four have a Kiwi element to them. Many say their experience in New Zealand’s unique bush country is making the difference.

Brazilian team, Try On Landscape, certainly think so. They withdrew after only 24 hours, unable to cope with the navigational challenges of the densely bushed Buller Gorge. “For us the navigation was very difficult,” said 43-year-old Ramons Martins, a scientist in his homeland. “The terrain here is very different to what we are used to in Brazil. Yesterday we stood on the mountain a very long time just not knowing where to go next. In the end we turned back the way we had came.”

The superior bush skill of Kiwi teams was highlighted by leaders Balance/Vector early in the current mountain bike stage today. Teams had to find their way through dense native bush between two tracks to make a checkpoint. Even Balance/Vector failed to pick up the second track, they illustrated superb navigation to emerge from the bush just 50m away from the checkpoint.

“We just couldn’t find the start of the second track,” said Nathan Fa’avae, so we just had to go off the map co-ordinates and hope for the best. Teammate Richard Ussher just shook his head; “It was pretty horrible, just dragging our bikes through bush for a couple of hours.”

Just 10min later on a rare stretch of sealed road Balance/Vector had another uniquely Kiwi challenge to contend with when they met a huge cattle herd crossing the road on the way to milking.

Unfortunately not all Kiwis teams hve been successful. The heavily-favoured local West Coast team of Duncan and Hamish Hamilton Duncan and Hamish, and Jill Westenra and Martin Lukes, withdrew late Tuesday after team captain Duncan Hamilton came down ill. "It just wasn't worth going into another night trek like this," said a disapointed Hamilton.

As night closes on the third day of the Adventure Racing World Championships only six teams are on the current 89k mountain bike in the ranges behind Reefton. Following this they face another trek on the Brunner Range before a relatively restful kayak down the Inangahua and Buller rivers.

A winner is not expected at the Tauranga Bay finish line, near Westport, until late on Friday night. And even Balance/Vector captain Nathan Fa’avae warned about celebrating too soon: “This is a tough course and anything can happen. If we make a major navigational mistake, or get sick or injured, there are lot of teams capable of catching us up, so we have to stay focused on looking after ourselves and not making mistakes.”

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