Expedition Africa 120km Bronkhorspruit
ARWS Africa Series Gets Underway at Bronkhorstspruit
Press Release / 14.04.2021
The first Adventure Racing World Regional series event in Africa for 2021, Expedition Africa 120 km Adventure, was held on the weekend of 10th April in Bronkhorstspruit, just north of Pretoria.
After months of not knowing if we would be able to host this event due to Covid19, we could finally celebrate once we reached the registration and briefing day.
38 teams from around South Africa arrived at the DealesRock venue, a beautiful resort hidden away amongst the trees and mountains in a spectacular valley.
The formalities were scheduled for Friday night and with an early start Saturday morning the teams had to waste no time planning the route and pack their gear boxes accordingly.
Having the start on Saturday at 6am gave the teams the maximum daylight hours, as we still have a night-time curfew between midnight and 4 am in South Africa.
It was a nervous start, yet exciting and humbling as teams were hungry to race after months in lockdown. The event started with a magnificent trekking leg over the mountains and very soon the top teams made a break from the pack. This leg included a swimming section and lots of bouldering through a majestic canyon.
Team Songlines showed in the early stages that they are the team to beat. They started with a bang and emerged at T1 in first position. They transitioned fast, and without any delays started the kayak leg. It was a beautiful paddle in a small, but flowing river with a few rapids and portages. They kept their lead until they made a rooky error on the next cycle leg by overshooting the turn off to T3.
Once they realized their mistake, they were far past the turn off already, which cost them a massive amount of work to get back to the original route and continue to T3. At this stage they were overtaken by a few teams. This navigation error cost them the race as with such a competitive and experienced starting line up you cannot recover from such a big mistake. On this trek the experienced team Cyanosis Adventure Racing took the lead, followed by Jabberwock and Pinegold.
These top 3 positions stayed the same until the end as Songlines worked extremely hard to regain some positions but could only secure a 6th overall place.
The biggest surprise was the Youth team called Balega. These youngsters met during their high school years and had by now shaped into a formidable team. With 3 members currently at University and 1 doing his final year in school they continued at a steady pace and took 4th position. Watch out for these youngsters as they will surely be seen on the podium in future years. With big dreams and goals this team might surprise us during the Adventure Racing Africa World Series in 2021.
Team Cyanosis Adventure Racing crossed the finish line just before sunset. Teams continued to filter in during the night and the early morning hours, with tired faces but with a sparkle in their eyes. The new teams tasted that finish feeling and we all celebrated the privilege of being outside and alive!
The prize giving hall was packed, with all the teams enjoying the buffet breakfast and photo presentation from Kirsten Oliver. A ll teams received a beautiful custom-made coffee mug at the prize giving and every team was acknowledged and celebrated.
Expedition Africa pride itself in organising complete events. Our aim is to grow the sport in Southern Africa.
This was the first event of the series for 2021. We have set the bar high now and all of our focus will now turn to the next event on 8th May at Swellendam, one of the most beautiful parts of the Western Cape.
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