Wenzhou Outdoor Challenge
Big Bucks Racing in China
Rob Howard / 11.04.2014
The first of a series of international races in China is about to start, with many of the world’s best adventure racers and multisport athletes taking part in the Wenzhou Outdoor Challenge.
The coastal city of Wenzhou is in Southern China (close to Taiwan), and though you may not have heard of it has a population of 2 million. It is the latest location to host races staged under a department of the Chinese Mountaineering Association, all of which have a similar format.
The races are run in daily stages with overnight hotel stays for the teams, and include all the regular AR disciplines, but little or no navigation, plus there is usually a spectacular ropes stage and some more novel activities, like rickshaw carrying. With no navigation and teams resting between stages the competitions are always exceptionally fast (compared to adventure racing) and very closely fought.
They are well funded by the municipality where the race takes place, in this case the Sports Government of Zhejing Province and the People’s Government of Wenzhou. That funding is used to attract international teams by the simple means of paying expenses and having large prize money pots. The prize money at Wenzhou is US $150,000 with the winners getting $35,000 right down to $2,000 for 12th place, plus there are good cash prizes for the podium places in daily stages!
It’s fair to say quite of few of the top AR teams are partly funded by the prize money they can win during the ‘China racing season’.
The race in Wenzhou will cover 260km over the 4 daily stages, and this race does include some orienteering, and also inline skating and biathlon. The navigation is on day one (Saturday), which includes 8km of inline skating, 16km of kayaking, a big uphill MTB stage (19.5km) and a 12km run with an 80m flying fox/abseil section.
Team Thule, who are regulars and very successful in China, have commented, “So its FJS with team Silva girl Josefine Wikberg’s day we think. They are the only team really good at both inline skating and navigation. I think the teams are just happy not to lose too much time to them. ”
FJS are one of several Swedish teams racing. Thule are competing with Jacky Boisset, Mimi Guillot, Martin Flinta and Marcel Hagener, who raced with them in China last season. Also racing are the new Swedish team, Peak Performance (see our earlier press release), led by Mikael Lindnord.
Other well known teams taking part are Brazilians BMS and Columbia Vidaraid (who will maybe find the 88% humidity easier to deal with than some), and a whole clutch of top Kiwi racers (most of the Coast to Coast top 10 in fact). Among the favouites will be the Red Bull team of Richard and Elina Ussher, who are China racing old hands, and Stuart Lynch and Trevor Voyce. They may be pushed by Team NZ Adventure who include Dougal Allen, Braden Currie, Glen Currie and Jess Simson.
In total there are 19 international teams, but frustratingly the hosts want the international teams only for their local prestige value (and maybe to set the bar high for developing Chinese teams) – they have little or no interest in international publicity.
So there are no websites for the races and no reporting, other than that which comes from the few friends and media who accompany the teams. (Facebook is blocked in China too, and the teams are shattered at the end of every day so they have little time for emailing news.)
Having said that we will try to pick up what news we can and report it on SleepMonsters as the Wenzhou Outdoor Challenge continues over the next few days.
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