Raid Gallacecia Expedition Race
Tactics from the Start in Gallaecia
Rob Howard / 12.05.2015
Raid Gallaecia began at 09.00 in the old town centre of Cuntis on a bright sunny morning. The teams gathered in the tree lined square below the church, with the trees and central fountain making perfect bike stands for the first transition.
Soon after the church chimes had played for the hour a loud firework was let off with a startling bang and for a moment no one knew whether to start or not, but after a momentary confusion they were off, racing out of the square and into the countryside for the first running/orienteering stage of the race.
The first checkpoint was an ancient stone circle on the hillside overlooking the town and it is the first of many cultural and historical sites the teams will visit. Gallaecia has thousands such sites, pre-historic, roman and medieval. CP2 was the hill top of Castro Sebil at over 500m and the day was already hot as teams climbed up. It is going to be a scorching day and tough on the teams. (Even before the start one of the Finnish racers was dipping his head in the fountain and said, “I hate this hot weather!)
CP3 was on a small river, but it was tricky to locate, hidden in the dense woods and the teams were having great difficulty using their Sportident dibbers as the tagging box was so tightly bound to the tree and the dibber was tight to their wrists, secured with an unbreakable wristband. It seems all the CP’s are like this and the teams have been using the back-up punches, some even managing to get their wristbands off. They’ve all been complaining about this.
After visiting the 4th and final checkpoint further down the river the teams headed back to Cuntis to retrieve their bikes. Sport HG had been leading but they were passed by Haglofs Silva who arrived at 11.00 exactly. The predicted time for the fastest arrival was 10.30, and it could well be a feature of the race that the course is taking longer than expected.
The Swedes were not the first back however. Team Belgium had arrived earlier, having cut two of the checkpoints. The rules here are that all CP’s have a penalty time, and if a team drops any they are moved to a short course ranking. This caused long discussions at last night’s race briefing and some confusion.
For the leading teams it’s not a concern as they are likely to be able to get all the CP’s, nor is it such an issue for the slower teams who expect to be short-coursed and can manage their race to get around to the finish. This is what the Belgians are doing and it’s likely to be a good tactical decision.
However, for the middle ranking teams it will be a very tactical race with difficult decisions, especially if the course does take longer than predicted. Phillipe Chod of Issy Aventure spoke to the Race Director about this after the briefing saying, “I think how long the coasteering takes will be critical and if its long then the right thing to do tactically is to cut checkpoints earlier in the race, but with all our followers at home and sponsors I can’t really do that – they will think why are they giving in so early! I just can’t do it. It’s difficult.”
This is a story which will play out through the race and if you are following the tracking and race leaderboard expect to see different teams missing different bits of the course.
The Belgians had to wait until the first team arrived before they were allowed to leave, and they were ready to go, following Haglofs Silva out of town, just as Team Sport HG arrived. Seagate arrived in 3rd place.
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