East Wind Knows No Quit

Adam Rose / 18.05.2017

Team East Wind have a long history, stretching back to 1996, when they competed in EcoChallenge British Columbia. In that event, they spent 18 hours going around in circles, ending up back where they started. They soldiered on, eventually finishing the stage 12 hours later.

Then in EcoChallenge 1997 in Australia, the female team member suffered an injury 7 days into the race, in which she was unable to flex her right Achilles tendon. Nonetheless, Captain Atsushi Suzuki chose to begin the next stage, a 13 hour trek through thick jungle over 1600m Bart Frere. Rather than give up, the men ended up taking turns to piggyback her UP the mountain and over, in terrain already challenging to fully-abled competitors.

This year, on Expedition Africa Baviaans, is one of the members of that original EcoChallenge team, Masato Tanaka. When their race took a turn for the worse on the final trek, first with a frustrating search for CP44, and then in the dune field struggling for CPs 48 and 49, it was no surprise that they refused to surrender to sleep or to simply follow teams that came up behind them.

First it was French team Nantes Adventures, who upon arriving at the finish line at 4am, were both horrified and saddened to realise they’d beaten the Japanese. A humble team themselves, they considered East Wind far more deserving of fourth place, being a much better team.

Then it was South Africans Castle Lite, who spoke of mind-numbingly tough conditions in the darkness, as sea mist settled over the sand and dry scrub, an already taxing navigation. They couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead, and their head torches gave off a blinding reflection, making everything worse. You couldn’t simply walk a bearing, because the terrain didn’t allow it.  

No, it wasn’t a life and death struggle. No-one would suffer lifelong injury if they stayed the course. The world would keep on turning if they simply sat it out until dawn, losing more places to the competition. Maybe that is exactly why their staunch resistance is so commendable. It was only a race; their competition was only truly against themselves; they could easily have headed south to the coastline and followed it towards the finish. But they did not.

East Wind did not sleep. They did not stop. In the shivering cold, they traced circle after circle, creating a spider web of trails on the tracking system that had dot watchers shaking their heads in disbelief, around the world.

When dawn came, they had spent 12 hours hunting those two CPs, and the light made it possible for them to get their bearings, nail the points, and escape the nail-pulling, hair-wrenching frustration.

Castle Lite followed soon after, and over the subsequent 20 km or so, gradually gained on East Wind. Ironically, Castle Lite weren’t focusing on overtaking, but on escaping the pursuit of trailing team Olympus, who they’d been dicing with throughout the race, and were known to be strong runners. And for the record, Olympus hadn’t seen Castle Lite since the preceding transition, and were to fight a different beast towards the end of their own race.

The final CP near the lighthouse came into view. Castle Lite took the lead, which galvanised East Wind into action. After 500km of exhausting competition, both teams hurtled over the sand towards the finish line. Dot watchers and spectators cheered alike.

At 10:25, Castle finished in 5th place, and at 10:28, East Wind in 6th.

Tears were shed on the finish line, and not just from the teams.

If Castle Lite had known the struggles that East Wind endured to complete the course, would they have hung back, giving the Japanese the place they deserved?

Of course not. And for the best of reasons. Captain Adrian Saffy put it into perspective in the post-race interview:

 “We went out to race hard, and to do the sport justice, and do our competitors justice. When we saw these guys, we started to race. Not because of 4th or 5th or 6th or 7th, it’s just that we wanted to respect them as athletes and to respect ourselves. You respect each other as team mates, and you respect your opponents by racing.”

East Wind were happy with their placing.

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