Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race 2011
Into the Unknown Unknown
Rob Howard / 10.02.2011
Following the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race thorugh the web coverage brought to mind Donald Rumsfeld’s classic quote, which if you read it slowly makes a kind of sense! Race watching this event is refreshingly unique in that viewers have to deal with more unknown’s than usual. You could even say there are some parallels to taking part; there will be a lot of ups and downs, you could get bogged down for a while, its going to go on for a long time, and you need endurance to stick with it.
The up-to-date reporting of day one from the popular and well resourced Torres de Paine National Park was great. We all got to see just how awesome Patagonia can be from the photos, and could follow the teams race positions through the early checkpoints as they cycled through the park and paddled down the Serrano and Grey rivers (which they also did 3 years ago). That was an up day. Now the teams have truly ventured into the wilds, where the word remote hardly begins to describe the checkpoint placements, and the entire press team all seem to have been stranded in Puerto Natales while their boat is used to get kayaks out to CP8. There is no news … a down day for race followers.
<b>The Known Knowns</b>
This sequence will not be a surprise to anyone who knows the race well. It might be the ‘last wild race’, but in many ways its very predictable. Bikes and gear failing to reach Punta Arenas and teams getting blown off their bikes by the Patagonian winds were pretty much sure to happen, and the breakdown in communication and stranding of the press team was a fair bet as well. They’re all known knowns.
Communications and transport resources being very limited and prone to unexpected difficulties are a given. There is no satellite tracking of the teams at PER, partly due to cost and also because the ubiquitous SPOT’s use satellites which have no coverage in the race area. There is no other means of communication either, except for Inmarsat Satellite phones. The press team have one, but there is no certaintainty it will work. (I guess that’s a known unknown!)
Even if it does they have to have found the teams first to have something to report. The only access to race areas is by boat much of the time (check Google Earth to view the course and see how many roads you can find ...) and with a limited number of boats race logistics will come ahead of press movements. And of course boats break down or are subject to rough seas and bad weather. (In case you were wondering there are only a few helicopters in the region and they are only available to the race in case of extreme emergency ... and maybe not even then!)
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