- by Ray Bernard
G4 Challenge heats up
07 April 2003: After experiencing temperatures of –20 degrees Celsius in up state New York, competitors of the Land Rover G4 Challenge were now faced with the 30 degrees heat of Cape Town, South Africa. Ireland's Paul McCarthy is teamed up with Germany's Dirk Ostertag for this leg of the challenge.
Day one of the second stage of this global adventure was to be the most physically testing of the challenge so far as they prepared for a grueling ‘maximiser’ event involving run, mountain bike, kayak and 4x4 driving elements.
The following provides a team by team report on how they coped on this challenging day.
1 Rudi Thoelen (Belgium) - Guy Andrews (Australia)
Thoelen described today’s Challenge as “the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” but his courage paid off and the fledgling Thoelen/Andrews partnership proved impossible to beat.
Thoelen started the day in second place and is looking like a hot tip for the Land Rover G4 Challenge crown. Andrews lost a day’s points tally after he arrived at a nightly camp 30 seconds late during the first leg. “It’s flat out from here on in,” he said. “Then we’ll just have to see what happens.”
2 Franck Salgues (France) - Inigo de Lara (Spain)
Salgues and de Lara combined brilliantly to claim second place in the Cape Town maximiser. Both ran well in the late morning heat and they followed this up with an excellent performance in the kayaking.
They may not have been working together as a partnership for long, but they displayed excellent teamwork on the off-road course. “Today was tough, but I’m looking forward to the rest of the week,” said de Lara.
3 Paul McCarthy (Ireland) - Dirk Ostertag (Germany)
A solid start for the Ireland/Germany coalition. The duo avoided serious mistakes, putting in strong performances in all of the day’s four disciplines. In a tough competition where consistency counts, both are well placed.
“I’m looking forward to working with Dirk,” said McCarthy. “I think individual strengths complement each other. It should be a good week.”
4 Chris Perry (Arabia) - Sergey Polyansky (Russia)
Arabia’s Chris Perry was the only person to be reveling in the hot conditions. “It’s like a nice Spring day for me,” joked the Dubai resident. He proved as much with a strong run to fourth place on the day.
Perry admitted that he’d chosen Polyansky for his navigational skills and the pair looked well placed to score some solid points over the days ahead.
4 Erik den Oudendammer (Netherlands) - Shinichi Yoshimoto (Japan)
Erik den Oudendammer admitted that he was concerned that there may be “a communications problem between Shinichi and I.” The Japanese’s English is not as fluent as some of the other competitors, but by the end of the day they seemed to have worked out an efficient system.
Yoshimoto struggles a little with the steep climb of Signals Hill, but he recovered strongly in the afternoon. Oudendammer said: “the climb took its toll on me but I felt better in the afternoon. The kayaking was terrific and the driving went really well for us.”
6 Tim Pickering (UK) - Nancy Olson (USA)
This wasn’t an easy day for the latest Anglo/American partnership. Pickering lost his identification chip on the morning run and ended up having to climb Signals Hill twice before he found it. He then missed a couple of checkpoints on the mountain biking section as he sought to make up time. Olson also had problems on the climb, where she made a navigational mistake, missed a couple of controls and forfeited the points on the section.
But both are expecting better things in the days ahead. “I chose Nancy because I knew she’d make me laugh,” said Pickering. “In a competition this tough, that’s a major bonus.”
7 Jim Kuhn (Canada) - Chester Foster (SA)
This was a bad day for the Canadian. A high-speed tumble off his mountain bike left him with severe lacerations to his left elbow, left knee and right wrist. He was taken to the event hotel by ambulance, where a makeshift theatre was erected. A couple of hours later, he was patched up with around 30 stitches and returned, defiantly, to complete the driving test. “I will do everything I can to continue,” he declared, to rapturous applause.
Chester Foster performed excellently all day, but was understandably concerned for his teammate welfare. “Jim’s my teammate, and I’ll help him all the way,” he said.
8. Cuneyt Gazioglu (Turkey) - Alberta Chiappa (Italy)
Chiappa took a wrong turn on the morning run, missed a control and forfeited her points. She also had a problem with her GPS fixing on her mountain bike, which, she admitted, “was my fault.” Nevertheless she did well on the driving section, which was “very very funny.”
Gazioglu’s enthusiasm was telling once again and he made a solid start to the second leg, although he admitted that it was taken him time “to get used to driving with the steering wheel on the right,”.
©2003 irishcar.com