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The first ever Discovery Channel World
Championship Adventure Race has been underway for two days
now in the Swiss Alps.
It's the culmination of a series of seven
major events worldwide, with the winners from each
individual round getting an paid entry into the one-off
final, with the winners becoming world champs, though as
ever, there's bound to be a certain amount of debate over
that one...
The course runs for 260 miles through the
Alps from the start in St Moritz to the finish in Zermatt in
the shadow of the Matterhorn with teams trekking, canyoning,
mountain biking, rafting, climbing and glacier trekking -
serious stuff.
How serious? Well, to give you an idea,
the mountain trekking along goes up to 8500 feet and totals
some 71 miles in three stages, while the glacier trek is a
17-mile epic on snow and ice that should take around ten
hours.
The race
web site carries a regularly
updated leader board and some reports on the event, plus
profiles of the various teams. Some bad news, from the guys
at On The Hill, who tell us that one of the 17 teams to drop
out so far is Mawn
y Wrach, which includes
OUTDOORSmagic and BIKEmagic member Chris McSweeney. Sadly it
seems that they were forced to withdraw after Carolyn Jones
suffered a head injury in a canyoning stage. Our best wishes
to her for a full recovery.
Current leaders at the time of writing
look to be Team
Pharmanax from New Zealand who
include three of the formidable Southern Traverse winning
team in their number.
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