
Chris Forne at the finish of the 2009 Adventure Race World Championships
After a long tough race, Nike Beaver Creek finished in a very respectable second place at the 2009 Adventure Race World Championships. I have not spoken to anyone from the team so haven’t gotten the story from the source, but it sounds like the final outcome had to do with some confusion on cutoffs. The latest post on SleepMonsters has a quote from Chris stating that they thought they had to be through a bike leg by 2 o’clock when in reality they just had to start by then. Due to this, they missed three checkpoints in the trekking leg causing them to no longer have the most received checkpoints.
This race had a difficult format to follow (and race and support) throughout and I’m unsure how I personally feel about optional checkpoints and sections. From the results, it appears that some teams skipped entire sections of the race while still finishing ahead of other teams that completed all portions. Maybe I just needed to be there to understand better, but this doesn’t seem right especially for a world championships.
No matter what happened, the new world champions, Helly Hansen Prunesco of England, raced extremely well and strong to win in such a strong field. Helly Hansen Prunesco received the most checkpoints and came on very strong towards the end proving they have what it takes. Congrats to HHP! Lundhags Adventure, Orion Health (last year’s world champs) and Navigator RaidLight rounded out the podium.
Congrats to Mike Kloser, Monique Merrill, Chris Forne and George Christison and everyone that competed in the race as it sounded grueling. As much as I enjoy being the Monday morning quarterback, I miss being out there to experience it myself.