Expedición Guaraní ARWS
A Strong Entry For The Return of Expedicíon Guaraní
Rob Howard / 09.07.2021
Expedicíon Guaraní is back for 2021, with 22 teams travelling to the Paraguayan capital, Asunción, for the start of the AR World Series race on Sunday. There are also shorter races and a trekking race as part of the programme, and 11 teams are entered in the full Expedition category, racing for World Series ranking points and places.
These include 3 strong visiting international teams. Among the favourites will be the BOA Multisport team from Brazil, including Camila Nicolau, Guilherme Pahl, Pedro Lavinas, and British racer Nick Gracie, who has been on the winning team at this race several times. The team won the recent Brazilian champs (an ARWS S. America race) and have been given financial support to attend Expedicíon Guarani by the CBCA (the Brazilian Adventure Racing Confederation) and their sponsors, SPOT satellite tracking.
However, for all their experience, they will have some strong completion from Team Blizzard of Russia, who have won a World Series race in the past (Expedition Africa) and ranked as high as 6th in the world. They will have a slightly different line up for this race, without Semen Yakimov or Ruslan Dyuldin, and with Konstantin Ivanov in his first World Series race. The team will be Evgeny Pochaev, Natalia Zimina, Konstantin Ivanov and Igor Manzhay. Evgeny said, “There are no big mountains in Paraguay, but plenty of hills with rich vegetation, and it seems that navigation skills will be crucial here. The team is well trained and ready to race!”
The other visiting international team are Uruguay Natural Ultra Sports, who currently rank just above Blizzard. Their team is the same line up which participated in Eco-Challenge Fiji; Federica Frontini, Gonzalo Smaldone, Thiago Bonini and their captain, Ruben Manduré. The three Uruguayans have not raced competitively since Fiji, however, Bonini has had much more racing in Brazil.
They were on the podium at the last Expedicion Guaraní, and are aiming to be there again. Manduré said, “We are arriving strong with expectations to fight for the first places. Thiago and I will navigate and we expect it to be difficult, especially the night trekking. The team’s goal is to reach the world top 10 this year.”
Navigation always seems to play an important role in the outcome of this race (Course Designer Urtzi Iglesias makes sure of that), and there is another experienced Brazilian navigator in Jonas Junkes, who will be racing in Team Arroyo Ari. (Brazilian racers will play a big part in this race!)
He says, “The team is me (Jonas), Leandro Tonet from Gaspar City (Santa Catarina Brasil) and Tania Sapoznik and Fernando Taboada from Assuncion (Paraguay). Yesterday, we arrived in the Assuncion airport to meet them and receive the best welcome! They came to Gaspar 3 weeks ago so we could get to know each other, train together and prepare our strategy for Expedicíon Guaraní. Now we are more confident about the team and we are sure with this team we go until the end together!”
The other strong Paraguayan teams contesting the top spots will likely be Ulala (who were 2nd behind Vidaraid in 2016 and raced at ARWS in Wyoming), and the ironically named, DQ Team.
The teams will be driven to an undisclosed start on Monday morning to begin the 442km course. (However, if they’ve read the race Facebook page they will know the department of Caaguazú, to the East of Asunción will be the event host.)
The course has 5 stages, starting with a 56km trek which has 31 checkpoints! This is followed by a 94km ride, and then a 68km trek ... with another 31 checkpoints. The second ride of the race is the longest at 181km, and the final stage is a combination of kayaking and trekking. There are rope stages on the second trek, so packs will be heavy, and although the hills in Paraguay are low, there are lots of them, and the scrub and bush will provide challenging navigation. The rides will be a lot harder on the dirt roads if the weather is wet, and the winners have an expected time of 65 hours.
As always at Guaraní, the teams will find a wonderful welcome in the villages and towns, and at the transition areas, where there will be a full range of services, including bike mechanics and bike washing facilities, plus food and drink. It’s the only race to put a coffee pot symbol on its logistics planner. Only in South America!
The race will have live tracking and you’ll be able to find the link for this at https://www.expedicionguarani.com/aventura once the race has started.
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