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Helly Hansen Prunesco are the Champions

Rob Howard / 14.11.2009

Team Helly Hansen Prunesco are the new Adventure Race World Champions! They crossed the finish line on the beach near Peniche at just after 9.30 in the morning, still a little uncertain of the result and not really believing that they were the champions. It took a few minutes after the immediate photos and interviews for the tears to flow.

At the start of this event race watchers were looking at a world class field of teams, including many former World Champion racers and the defending title holders, but it's fair to say few if any put Helly Hansen Prunesco in their top five predictions. The team themselves might have hoped for a top five place at best, but even they would not have bet on themselves to beat the likes of Quechua, Orion Health and Nike/Beaver Creek, who have dominated world racing for many years.

So, who are the new world champions? They are a mix of the previous team Aberdeen Asset Management, and the newer Helly Hansen team who won the Patagonia Expedition Race earlier in the year. The only member of both those winning teams is Nic MacLeod, an army doctor, who has raced extensively internationally. She was the only one who didn't cry on the finish line! Tom Gibbs is the team navigator who has lead the team so brilliantly through the complexities of this race and his tactics and decision making have been crucial. Tom used to race with Saab Salomon and this is his fifth World Championship ... and it's the first one he's finished! At the airport before he left England he told me, "I don't know how many big races I have left in me. "

Nick Gracie and Warren Bates started adventure racing together 9 years ago at a one-day sprint race and Nick says they were awful, but had a lot of fun. It was not long after they formed Team Aberdeen Asset Management that they decided they'd like to win the World Championship and if you look on Nick's SleepMonsters profile that is his stated ambition. Now it's an ambition fulfilled. With Team Aberdeen Asset they raced several previous world championships, and have had a top 10 finish before.

And if you wondering about the Prunesco, they are a Chilean Prune exporter who supported the team to get them to the Patagonia Expedition race, and came in again to help sponsor them for this race.

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