Monday, 07 November 2011 12:54
Thule Adventure Team win ARWC 2011
by Rob Howard sleepmonsters.com
At 19:59 (Tasmanian time), after almost five and a half days of racing, Team Thule Adventure of Sweden won the 2011 Adventure Race World Championships, finishing in Burnie, Tasmania.
The team passed their rivals Seagate at the last transition and exchanged a few words with the team who were serving out their penalty time. They seemed surprised to see them there, perhaps not realising this would happen, and commiserated with the New Zealanders. At this stage they knew they had only to ride 35km along the road into Burnie and the championship title was theirs as they had a couple of hours in hand.
When they arrived at the stadium in Burnie the team were directed to ride around the velodrome track surrounding the cricket oval and they draped their country and sponsors flags over themselves and enjoyed their lap of honour, before coming to a stop in front of Craig and Louise Bycroft. Here they were presented with champagne to spray and posed for photos before being applauded into the pavilion where the famous XPD finishers lounge has been set up.
This is an area with four comfortable chairs to relax in, beside a table set with pizza and champagne... to drink this time! (From specially inscribed XPD champagne flutes.) Traditionally a team relaxes and enjoys their finish here, until the next team arrives. Naturally TeamThule were all smiles ... between big munches on their pizza slices, which disappeared very quickly!
When being questioned by the assembled media the team said they had seen a snake and thought the long bike ride was the hardest part of the race, and also the cold. Jacky Boisset said, “Mimi and I spent a month in Tasmania before the race, so we knew what to expect. We were sending emails to the others saying how cold and wet it was here! We also knew some of the places we went to on the race as we had already been there in our travels.”
Miriam Guillot said; “The camp last night was beautiful. It was nice to relax and not race but we relaxed a little too much and only woke up at 06.10, so we were late starting!”
Per Vestling was asked if there was a point where the team knew they had the race won. “Not until the end,” was his reply. “We knew the times and the penalty for Seagate but things can go wrong even on the last stage so we were very careful.” Boisset added, “We were so afraid to get a penalty we checked all our mandatory gear three times at every transition today!” Vestling continued, “We made some mistakes, but no adventure race is perfect and we didn’t make any big mistakes.”
Martin Flinta was quiet and a little ill at ease in the camera lights and at a loss for words when asked if there were any funny moments that came to mind, so Jacky Boisset spoke up again. “Martin is always funny,” he said, “even when he does not know it!”
The team said they would stay together to race next year and to defend their title in France in 2012.
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