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A Sprint Finish for 4th and 5th

Rob Howard / 07.11.2011

It was tense waiting on the finish line for the 4th and 5th placed teams to arrive. Having spent the night unable to find a CP the two teams were racing in together along the road into Burnie and the Race Director was asked questions he’s never been asked before. “Where exactly is the finish line?� and “Is it the last rider across the line to count or the first?�

The tension rose as Louise Bycroft began frantically waving her arms at the entrance to the veldorome track and then the teams rode in ... together. AXA were grouped in front after passing adidas TERREX, who had jumped on their wheel. Michael Lindnord was out front, leading the pack, his face contorted into a grimace. Passing the massed cameras at the finish line the teams still had one full lap to go and half way around the British team made their move led by Tom Gibbs.

“When we entered the veldorome I thought, oh no, we’re going to lose this ... but then something snapped and I decided, sod it, that’s not going to happen and pushed past them, and the team followed.� In a sight probably never seen before in an adventure race the teams raced the final few hundred metres of the track, the 3 male British riders now in front ... and everything depended on Sonya Clark, who just managed to finish ahead of two of the Swedish riders to claim 4th place for her team.

There was no stopping on the finish line this time – the teams shot by and took a few hundred metres more to come to a halt. Micheal Nordstrom threw his helmet in disgust and disappointment and it landed with a thump against the side boards, then he sat in the middle of the track, head in his hands for some time until his wife Helena ran over to console him. The race time for the two teams showed them 1 second apart!

Adidas Terrex rode a lap of honour carrying the Union Jack flag before settling into the finishers lounge and AXA were kind enough to let them stay there for longer than one second! I asked Tom Gibbs what had happened in the night when the teams spent hours looking for the final trekking CP. “We had a good lead when we got there,� he said, “but at night it was just impossible to find. It was on a forested hillside round the back of a tree and was described as an on steam, but there was no stream or even a stream bed! It may as well have been described as ‘tree in forest’! We tried everything we could and AXA turned up, but in the end we both camped until daylight, and to make things worse it started pouring with rain.�

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