maintaining the Extreme Class. The race is being led by WILSA SPORT
HELLY HANSEN, despite the fact that they lost their tracking system
yesterday and suffered a 1 hour penalty last night they still finished
the stage at 6:15 this morning having built up a lead of some 45
minutes during the mountain bike stage. They commented that the stage
was longer than expected.
The Raider Classification and second team to arrive was OAHU who
walked into the stadium just before 7 AM having missed out on the
final mountain bike section.
Many teams are requesting time adjustments for the Ride and run stage
where the behavior of the horses affected their progress. British team
HELLY HANSEN UK had lost more than 50 minutes on two occasions during
the first half of the ride and run stage, The first stop some 8 k into
the race when one horse panicked and only calmed down following three
injections from a vet, some 12K later the second horse stopped and
would go no further , so all the team had to run to the compulsory
stop to start the second leg with a new horse which was the reason
they became tail end Charlie and had to race against the clock to
continue in the Extreme classification..They have appealed for redress
which might bring them back into contention with the top 5 teams.
Results of pending appeals will be announced tomorrow, prior to the
next stage.
The overall classification is still close at the top with 5 teams
still in contention and allegations were rife concerning possible
contraventions, during the night where some teams may have taken a
short cut to avoid the route which required bike carrying over and
around boulders.
One member of team IMI Groupe complete the stage with a leg injury,
but will continue on as they can still kayak and bike and hope their
leg will recover before the next running event in Stage 3.
Teams were relieved to hear that the start of Stage two had been
delayed by three hours, until 1500 hrs which allowed them time to
sleep for a few hours before they had to leave for a road transit to
the start of the next stage, which starts with nearly 100K of Kayaking
followed by mountain biking
Teams following the Adventure route headed directly to the start of
the next stage and this class is being led by a team of vets - BAYER -
Vet Adventure Team.
This afternoon the race transferred to the boat basin at
Saint-Florentin Teams lined up for a start between two buoys, racing
upstream toward a narrow bridge hole, first to reach the bridge was
WILSA SPORT HELLY HANSEN, Many teams had nervous moments with a few
collisions, some teams with fragile racing boats hung back to stay out
of trouble.
The kayak leg has many locks, where teams have to lift their boat out
of the water below the lock and carry them uphill to the next level
and this is where teams with lighter boats have an advantage, One team
with heavy sea kayaks carried a trolley to help with the transition
around the lock. The order at the first lock was WILSA SPORT HELLY
HANSEN, VAUCLUSE AVENTURES EVASIONS and ABSOLUE RAID Décathlon St
Orens, other teams with K2 kayaks, such as HELLY HANSEN UK were
moving swiftly through the field which also included sit on top
kayaks. The teams at the back of the pack with heavier kayaks such as
LATTITUDE 55 were at a definite disadvantage and seemed to be
struggling even at the first portage, so it is expected they will be
very tired by tomorrow morning.