A Movistar Performance

Rob Howard / 14.11.2014

To the chants of ‘Ecuador, Ecuador’, which have spurred them on the whole way, Team Ecuador Movistar crossed the finish line at Huairasinchi 2014, the AR World Championships, to take 3^rd place and complete the podium.

It is a fantastic result for the home team and richly deserved. When they were stranded 2km from the finish of the river paddle stage and had to endure an 11 hour dark zone stop spirits must have been rock bottom, yet the came back to gain a place and pass ‘Team France’.

When team captain Santiago Mino was given the champagne bottle to open (which is in fact filled with beer as its easier for the teams to swig), he had a very wobbly bottom lip and was struggling to control his emotions. Jari Kirkland of the USA, who joined the team for this race, was in tears too at the emotion of the finish.

After everyone had recovered themselves a bit I asked Jari about the race.  She really couldn’t say too much about the finish and her feelings, she was still coming to terms with it all.  She finished 3^rd equal last year racing with adidas TERREX and did manage to say that both finishes were amazing moments. (That tie was with Tecnu, and both those teams are yet to finish here.)

“I made some navigational mistakes,” she said, “which I was really upset about, as I felt I’d let the team down, but now they don’t seem so important. It’s amazing how it has panned out, we were so happy in 4^th place, but then we passed the French 500m from the finish of the Amazon trek. They were sat around and Jackie was curled up in a ball, and we asked if they needed someone to come back from the TA and help them, but they said no.

“That trek was so hard – so much mud and it went on much longer than we expected! We’d run out of food and water at the end and I’d been pushing the guys to keep going. They’d fall back and complain a bit, but I’m not really the nurturing, compassionate type and I just said, ‘No, we have to push on and get this done. We came to stand up and be counted and that is what we’re going to do!’”

When I asked her if she’d driven the team on to the finish she said, “Yes, I guess I did, but the guys were great, they did what needed to be done and I know they’ve suffered more than they’ve ever suffered before.

“This course suited me as I live in the mountains at altitude and I think they did a great job with the course and took us to some fantastic places, although that mud trek was way too long!”

Asked about their enforced stop in the Dark Zone she said, “We certainly never planned on that. Paddling isn’t the guys strongest suit and when we got to 06.30 we just had to camp out.  We had no food so it was a hungry time!”

As we concluded our interview the Race Director Santiago Lopez came over to congratulate her ... and to hear one of the many (smiling) complaints about the mud trek in the Amazon from Jari.

You can follow the race live on http://live.huairasinchi.com and see more photos on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SleepMonsters 

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