- by Brian Byrne
G4 challenger makes top eight after 1st round
04 April 2003: Ireland's Land Rover G4 Global Challenge contestant John McCarthy, and his team-mate for the first stage Tim Pickering of the UK, are among the top eight at the end of the first stage of the challenge yesterday in New England, USA.
They're pictured here having dinner at a night campsite during the stage. There are three more stages to go, the next of which will start at Cape Town, South Africa, this weekend. In all there are 16 competitors.
The results of the two Maximisers, 18 Hunters and International Selections combined have produced a new top eight competitors, although the actual order of merit will not be revealed until that top eight are about to choose a team mate from the remaining eight at Team Partnership Selection in Cape Town, at the start of Stage Two this weekend.
Since kicking off on Sunday with an urban 4x4 obstacle course on Broadway in New York City, the 16 international competitors sweated by day and froze by night as they battled each other and the end of a New England winter.
Each day, eight pairs of competitors had to decide, in The Strategy Pit, in which order they will complete up to six 'Hunters' or physical tasks between one night's campsite and the next.
The first main 'battlefield' was the snowy Catskill Mountains and an awesome selection of physical challenges, from running and snowshoeing to mountain biking, climbing icy river beds to kayaking the barely thawed waters of the Hudson river's raging tributaries.
Navigation proved to be a major stumbling block for many of the teams. But there were other problems. Chris Perry and Franck Salgues were the first team to stare disaster in the face.
"We left our Visa behind at one checkpoint and only because another team were kind enough to tell us, did we make it back, pick up the Visa and continue without too much time lost," sighed Perry. The Visa, a device which allows Challenge management to ensure teams don’t try to make up time between Hunters by speeding on the roads, must remain in the teams’ possession at all times.
Most of the Hunters on Tuesday, or Day 3, were around Lake Placid, home to the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics. This was the second day of chasing down Hunters, and the teams could feel the difference in their confidence and capability. Trusting of each others’ abilities and of their equipment, they started pushing themselves to the max.
But the real drama of the day, and arguably of the week, came late at night in the campsite. At thirty seconds to ten o'clock, thirty seconds on the right side of the deadline given to teams to return to base without losing all that day's hard-earned scores, Chester Foster and Guy Andrews reached the safety of base.
Or so they thought. In the black night the teams could not find the exact spot where they must register their arrival with an electronic key or 'dibber'. The clock hit ten fifteen and more than 300 miles of hardship and effort was erased in a heartbeat. Then, to compound the incomprehension, news came through that Chester and Guy were not the only latecomers. Nancy Olson and Sergey Polyansky, from America and Russia were also late into the Vermont camp and had their day's work nullified.
Wednesday included the first dedicated 4x4 element to the Hunters. Having nursed their trusty Land Rover Freelander V6's round over 1000 miles of New England, now they had to put them to the test round a slalom course at Equinox, in western Vermont.
Stage one of the month-long adventure closed out with a dramatic mountain ski and snowboard race in the New Hampshire White Mountains. The Wildcat Maximiser was won by the Dutch/Turkish duo of Cüneyt Gazioglu and Erik den Oudendammer. Second was the pairing of US Marine Nancy Olson and Russia's Sergey Polyansky.
©2003 irishcar.com