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BY MARTIN DUGARD lses and Eco-Challen e battle it out for Gerard Fusil, founder of the Raid Gauloises adventure race, licked his lips and looked around the audito rium with anticipation. It was January 1997. The Frenchman stood on a small stage at the Wild Coast Resort in South Africa, addressing 300 assembled athletes and press who had just endured two weeks of racing 450 miles through South Africa and Lesotho. As was his custom, Fusil chose the closing ceremonies to announce the date and location of the next Raid, which is held in a different country each year. It was a closely guarded secret until then. "Nineteen ninety-eight will be the Philip ines." Fusil paused. Then, as an afterthought, he tossed out the words that would plunge the adventure racing world into chaos: "In April." Within a week. the Eco-Challenge. an adventure race that would very much like to steal the Raid's title as " the toughest race on earth, " announced, coincidentally, that April was the month of their 1998 race in Morocco. This was cause for a dilemma. Both nts require extreme physical endurance through mountain biking, rafting and climbing. And both events take two weeks to rnrnnl,'!A with at least that much post-race recovery time. Athletes Id either do one race or the other, but not both. To many it appeared an obvious effort by Eco to supplant Raid. Morocco is a two-hour flight from France, where the id is headquartered and the bulk of the world's adventure rac live. The Philippines are halfway around the world. This save athletes a fortune in airfare and excess baggage charges the 70 pounds of gear they lug around. To sweeten the deal, Eco Challenge founder Mark Burnett and corporate benefactor The Discovery Channel announced they wouldn't charge the usual 0,000 entry fee. The Raid made no such announcement. "C'mon," said Jim Garfield, a veteran of both events, "I've got a hard time believing this is coincidental." The genesis of the matter is money. When Burnett fell in love with the Raid concept back in 1991, he reportedly entered into an agreement with Fusil to buy North American rights. Whether or not that actually happened is a matter of dispute-Fusil maintains Burnett was merely being charged a consulting fee-but Burnett eventually found that the rights weren't Fusil's to sell. Instead, they belonged to Pub Event, the Raid's Paris-based parent company. While Burnett pushed forward with developing Eco-Challenge as a copycat Raid to be held only in the US, he also pushed forward with an unsuccesful suit against Fusil in 1995. Details are sealed. Though Burnett was often heard fuming about his per sonal distaste for Fusil, things settled down after the suit. The adventure racing world became a calm place, evenly divided between the Raid and Eco. The Raid was an international event, preferred by athletes for its far-flung locales (Borneo, Madagascar, Patagonia)' stiff competition (the "toughest race on earth" reputation)' and ethereal underpinnings (the "Spirit of the Raid" is a code of compassion, adventure and sports manshipl. Eco was strictly a North American event, seemingly Irl"oin""rl for television. The omnipresent TV cameras and Burnett's reference to the event as a "production" instead of a race led many athletes to dub Eco "The TV Show." This was reinforced when The Discovery Channel purchased a big chunk of the event. Even when the TV Show went international with the announcement of a race in Australia for 1997, the truce was in place. Then Eco scheduled themselves head to head with the Raid and things got weird. First, in May 1997, Fusil left the Raid and parent company Pub Event to form a new event (the inaugural Authentic Adventure takes place in March 1999 in Western Samoa). Then Patric Brignoli of Pub Event immediately changed the location of the 1998 Raid and moved it to Ecuador. Due to the rainy season, it would take place in September. What a coincidence, Eco-Challenge shot back. We were about to change our date to September-something to do with local religious holidays and the weird weather systems in Morocco's Atlas Mountains. "Of course it's coincidental. The Discovery Channel is so big that they don't even care about the Raid Gauloises, " Burnett said while standing at the finish line in Australia. "All the top teams say Eco's the best event they've ever done and that they'd choose it over the Raid any day." This would prove a major miscalculation. Defending Eco champions Robert Nagle, Ian Adamson and John Howard announced they would race the 1998 Raid as part of Team Salomon. Another of their teammates, Keith Murray, announced he was joining New Zealand's Team Endeavour for the Raid. Soon the dominoes fell. Team after team, anxious to race the sport's premier event, chose the Raid over Eco. Everyone wanted to be part of the most competitive adventure race in history, which the 1998 Raid will likely be. It got so bad that teams were talking of doing Eco only because the field would be so weak. "What the heck, " one veteran who'd never finished in the $50,000 prize money enthused, "if no one else is there, my team might even win."