Adventure Beat

 

Primal Quest Utah has crowned a winner, but not without great cost.  Legendary racers from the best teams in the sport's history limped over the finish line, ravaged by the heat and difficulty of this 450-mile sufferfest.  In a cruel irony given the long six days of racing, the top four teams had to sprint to the finish, making for excruciatingly close racing. Primal Quest's Gordon Wright and Michael Oldenburg report from the finish line.

The past six hours have been witness to two unprecedented and thrilling expedition adventure race finishes. As lead teams Nike PowerBlast and GoLite/Timberland made their way through the final checkpoints, they ascended, traversed and rapelled the infamous rock formations of Castle Rock, the Rectory and Priest and Nuns. The section, which consumed over six miles of rope, was the pinnacle of the race. From there, exhausted and beleaguered, the teams trekked roughly two miles to the Colorado River where they paddled kayaks to the finish line.

At 5:45 a.m. this morning, as dawn was breaking, Team Nike/PowerBlast marched through the chute and crossed the finish line with Team GoLite/Timberland less than 22 minutes behind. Originally leading the race by nearly 3 hours, GoLite powered through the final hours of the Primal Quest to give Nike a true run for the money. Having raced for nearly six days — 144 hours — such a close finish was unprecedented.

"We had to persevere and push like no other," said team captain Mike Kloser, of Nike's attempts to keep GoLite in their rear-view mirror on just 13 hours of sleep over the course of the entire race.

Even more impressive, at about half past noon, Teams Merrell/Wigwam and Supplierpipeline staged an insanely dramatic finish. As Merrell got off the ropes and began jogging and stumbling toward the final two-mile river section, they thought they saw a glint of helmets and dust clouds behind them.

They didn't want to believe it until it was nearly too late: it was the Canadians of Supplierpipeline, making a play for the $25,000 third-place prize. Merrell's Neil Jones said, "We knew they were about 45 minutes behind us on the ropes. We were still jogging down the gulch, and Ian started pointing up the valley. I thought he was having me on!"

"They went by us like, WHOOOSH," said Robyn Benincasa. Neil Jones and Ian Edmond broke into a sprint to give chase, while Jeff Mitchell hooked Benincasa up to a tow line and beat it after them. Both teams scattered climbing gear across the Colorado River shore in an effort to jump in the HySide duckies and reach the finish. When the dust settled, it was Supplierpipeline, a superb paddling team, pulling away first by a slim margin.

"We couldn't make our boat go," said Jones.  "I was sitting on the end, and it wasn't until we sat on the bottom and created a "V" shape that we started to move a little bit.  We were close enough that our paddles were touching; and our boats were spinning around."

The teams raced side-by-side the length of the paddle, only to find Merrell pull up at the take-out seconds in front of the amateur team. After a mad scramble up the bank and an improbable sprint to the finish, Merrell crossed under the banner, stopped dead in their tracks as champagne washed over them, and cried.

Well, at least Benincasa did, and deservedly so. Her team had raced for six days, without sleep, in the pressure-cooker of the sport's biggest race, with a ton of money riding on the outcome.

After a shower of applause and champagne, both teams took the winner's stage together, crediting each other's competitive spirits and acknowledging the extreme accomplishment of finishing one of the most difficult races on Earth.

Team Solomon/Crested Butte placed fifth at Primal Quest — surprising competitors and fans alike. Just days ago, the team was ranked well beyond the top ten, but had unusually high spirits and energy.

In an interview conducted at the start of the race, teammate Jari Kirkland stated, "We feel we have the speed to keep up with the top five teams, but we're not... yet. We'll try to move to the top ten in the LaSalle Mountains. The Tour de France starts on July 1st, and that's our motivation to be finished by then."

Team Solomon passed competitors in the final hours as if they were standing still. It gained speed and confidence with every meter of elevation gained. "We'll be conservative until we get out of the desert — it's a climate we are not really familiar with," Jon Brown had predicted on the second day of the race. "We'll try to move into the top 10 in the LaSals."

It was a day like no other in Primal Quest history and, so far as anyone can recall, in expedition-length adventure racing.