1 BERN &
Australia's new superstars of AR have recently cracked the top 10 in the Adventure Race World Series. They came a second at the most recent Expedition Africa and battled to the end just missing gold by minutes.
Thunderbolt AR You know with XPD you are going to get a very professional and well run event. Craig and Louise have plenty of experience as race directors (and racers). It’s great racing with a home ground advantage in world class fields and even better when you can drive your car loaded up with gear to the race start, or put your car on a boat as the case may be for Tassie. I am very lucky that my 3 teammates all have plenty of AR experience having raced in some of Australia’s top teams over the years. I was introduced to Hugh when I raced with him in my first AR in Falls Creek in 2015 and we have continued to race together ever since. Josh actually support crewed for us that race and after initially racing against us teamed up with us later that year.
understanding of each other’s strengths, weaknesses and adopted roles enabling us to race well together as a team and as friends. I mean if you are going to get lost in the bush you want to do it with 3 mates. Have you done any races in Tasmania before – what are you most excited about going to tassie - Josh has done all the previous Tassie XPDs and Hugh did the last one possibly looking to make amends for some spectacular backtracking after a missed CP down a river. I personally haven’t raced there before but have hiked the overland track and done some gourmet food touring around so am certainly looking forward to it.
We had raced against Leo many times we were lucky enough to have Leo join us after last years XPD world champs and Thunderbolt AR was born. We always said Leo was our bait if needed for Expedition Africa but we figured we had so much fun together we should probably keep him around for longer ;-) Tassie for me sounds like an amazing place to race with some rugged wilderness and That and his ability to make us laugh spectacular natural beauty. I am expecting and go faster at the same time. We share a tough race in an adventurers paradise, a lot of laughs, sarcasm and bad humour hopefully with some time to appreciate the out on course. We have built up a good scenery.
640KLM IN, ITS TIME FOR TOW
towingTip 01 I have certainly done some towing on the run leg but it is all relative and certainly swings in roundabouts. You check your ego at the door as its just about working together as a team to go as fast as you can or faster than the slowest person at the time. We generally try to do a bit of pack and weight distribution to even abilities out first and we try not to use the towlines where possible but we have had some 20km+ ‘sprint’ finishes on foot in the last couple of races which will always hurt especially after a few days so the towlines have come out.