Tuesday, 01 March 2011 12:24
Ant Stott in Umko accident
This year’s Dusi runner up Ant Stott has been forced to withdraw from what would have been his first attempt at The Unlimited Non-stop Dusi after a nasty accident on the Umkomaas River on Sunday.
Stott collided with a rock during a training trip in Number One rapid in the Hella Hella gorge, en route to the start of the Corsair Umko Challenge that started at Number Eight rapid.
"I hit a rock hard while paddling on the Umko and have rather bad whiplash and my shins are quite battered and bruised so I’m struggling to walk properly. I’ve decided to just give it a miss this year," said Stott. “It just wasn’t meant to be I guess."
Stott, who recently finished just behind winner Andy Birkett in one of the tightest finish The Unlimited Dusi has ever seen, had been nervously preparing for his debut attempt at the arduous daylong event which takes place from Pietermaritzburg to Durban on Friday 4 March but now he will have to wait at least another year before giving it a shot.
“I’m starting to near the end of my career now and so I’m running out of competitive years to try win it so I thought I’d give it a go this year. I’ve seconded for twelve years and every time we get to the finish and I see the state the guys are in I say that is the reason why I haven’t done it!” said Stott.
“But as the years go by my chances of winning it get slimmer and slimmer and so I was hoping to give it a go for the first time this year,” he added.
Stott had secured the services of Kelvin Trautman for the 2011 Non-Stop race. Trautman finished second last year with Craig Turton despite an unfortunate incident early on in that race.
“He broke his foot rest at Mission rapid and I figured for him to paddle all the way from there to Durban he must be pretty tough!” explained Stott.
“I suppose he is fairly unknown but he would have been the experienced one out of the two of us when it came to this race,” he added.
The thought of putting oneself through such extreme pain and suffering voluntarily isn’t many people’s idea of fun and yet year after year the field grows.
“It was very daunting and I was very nervous. It’s quite scary thinking about how long the race really is!” said Stott. “Fortunately it’s naturally broken up into quite a few smaller sections though so I guess one has just got to try focus on the next short segment rather than the whole race all together.”
“Maybe in one way it would have been to my advantage that I’d never done it before because I wouldn’t have known exactly what pain I would have been in for but this certainly didn’t distract me from how daunting a prospect it would have been,” he added.
“But a race of this nature is not really about the competition. It’s a lot about yourself and you have to try just focus on your race. If you can aim to finish in sub-eight hours you’ll have a very good chance of winning.”
The Unlimited Non-stop Dusi starts at 5:30am on Friday 4 March at Camps Drift in Pietermaritzburg and ends at Blue Lagoon in Durban.
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