Kiwi Teams Lead The Way at Wenzhou

Rob Howard / 12.04.2014

Here is a quick roundup of available news on the first day of the International Wenzhou Challenge in China.

Day one looked like it might be a strong one for the Scandinavian entry as it surprisingly featured a navigational format and inline skating – both of which are strengths of the Swedish based teams. The skating is also always a real challenge to the Kiwi teams, who don’t consider it an AR discipline – so the day one result was a surprise.

Team FJS of Sweden did well as expected, but they could only claim third behind two Kiwi teams.  They report it was a really hot day and that they lead after the paddling stage, but couldn’t hold the lead in the final cycle and run stages.

The winners were Team NZ Adventure, a new team who took victory on their first day of competitive racing (and despite the skating). The team are all multisport specialists, and comprise Jess Simson, Dougal Allen, Braden Currie, and late replacement Bob McLachlan.

There are no official results published (or team lists) so the best guess at the moment is that the second placed team were Richard Ussher’s Red Bull Team.

Team Thule Adventure said they had a good time on the skating and cycling stages, but made two critical mistakes. They missed a channel on the orienteering based paddle stage, dropping 10 minutes, and then missed a trail junction later in the race, descending rather than climbing and losing a further half hour. They finished up 15 minutes down on the podium teams, which is going to be hard to pull back in such a tight competition.

Tomorrow’s second stage starts with a 14km run, then a 33km kayak and finishes with a 46km mountain bike plus an abseil at the very end.

That’s all the news we’ve been able to find for now, but if there is more, or any results we’ll update our Facebook page.

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