Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25059
Reinschreiber and executive race director Nick - - - - - - - - - - - r r Freyer invited the top athletes from a variety of disci plines. It was Freyer, a Hong Kong-based executive with International Management Group (lMG), who brought in Mild Seven to foot the $10 million production cost (most of the money went to freight charges: despite the space program, Xichang is so remote that all supplies-everything from finish line banners to kayaks to press room telephones-had to be flown in from Hong Kong). Endurance sports (think: lung power) and smoking (think: emphysema) are strange bedfellows. But adventure sells ciga rettes (think: Marlboro Man) and racers couldn't care less about who the sponsors are as long as there's a place to compete. That (un)palatable explanation aside, I was still startled to receive a car ton of smokes in my press packet (think: American journalist in the streets of Beijing, making new Chinese friends by giving away free Mild Sevens). The money brought in the world's best multisport athletes. From adventure racing, Teams Eco-Internet and Endeavour, who either won or placed second in every major adventure race in the world during the previous year. From the triathlon world, Team Santa Cruz Adventure Racers (SCAR) which, despite their name, was comprised of top-rank triathletes. Team leaders Mike Pigg and Paul Huddle have dominated their sport for the past 10 years. The other two members, David Kelly and Terry Schneider, were triathletes with Eco-Challenge experience. Their calm, even approach to competition was in stark contrast to Pigg's high strung competitiveness and even Huddle's constant yet subtle sense of humor. ' Seventeen teams began the • race with a mad 3lj,-J(ilome • around Lake Quiong HaL The premise was simple: Two bikes per • team. This meant two team members • ran and two biked at all times. Such a ter mountain bike biathlon • beginning guar anteed that the field would split an epic battle were planted. SCAR, the triathlon speedsters, versus the wily Eco-Internet. Through the remaining days of com petition, the two teams were never separated by more than 20 minutes. "We almost immediately. The two top teams opened a gap on the field in those first hours of competition that never closed. As the events of day one segued from biathlon to off-road in line skating to trail running to lake paddling, the seeds of knew we could beat them on every day but Day Three," Robert Nagel, captain of Eco-Internet pointed out. "So our strategy was to win all the other days." Nagel didn't think highly of professional triathletes invading the world of adventure racing. Winners of the Southern Traverse and Eco-Challenge adventure races in the last year, Eco-Internet competes with a nuanced style that speaks loudly of energy conservation. They prefer to hang back and wait for opponents' mistakes instead of making bold surges into the lead. They rarely talk during com petition, and when they do it's with a calm voice. So for Eco-Internet to make bold declarations about winning three of the four days amounted to-for them-radi cal boasting. Yet it was right on the mark. After Day One, Eco-Internet led by seven min utes. The primary focus was a 3,500-step run up a seven-story temple on the slopes of Mount Lu. The steps were steep, stone, decorated with dragon heads chiseled from granite. Inside the temple, where the dragons were carved from wood and dressed in red lacquer, racers blitzed through in a frantic rush quite the opposite of meditative serenity (though it should be said that the locals seem to use the place more for tea drinking and chain smoking than worship). After Day Two, when Eco-Internet's paddling strength proved the difference on the 40-kilo meter stage down the Tranquil, they stretched their lead to 15 minutes. But Day Three, with its 50 kilometers of uphill mountain biking followed by 20 steep kilometers of downhill running, belonged to SCAR. With Huddle and Kelly leading the way, and Pigg literally towing Terry Schneider and her bike to the summit of Mor Pang by a length of surgical tubing-SCAR won Day Three by 22 minutes. "We had to do it today," said Huddle. "This was our day to either take a run at the championship or fade quietly into the sunset." The final day SCAR held a slender seven-minute lead over Eco-Internet. "There's no reason to hold anything back now," warned Eco-Internet's Nagel. il named Big Stone Cliff, teams mounted bikes and rode 52 kilometers to Lake • And they didn't. The race day began with a 12-kilometer scramble up a moun- tainside via a rubble-strewn trail . After a 300-foot rappel down the appropriately 11»1iI L_ •• _ _ •••• _ ____