Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race director Stjepan Pavicic believes leaders AdidasTERREX-Prunesco are facing a tough mental challenge in the early part of the massive 191km trek they have just begun – and they risk being hunted down by Gearjunkie.com after pushing too hard in the opening days of the race.
The British team, which has won the race for the last two years under the name of Helly Hansen-Prunesco, raced hard through the opening bike, kayak and went on to build a 10-hour lead in the first trekking section. But a short-cut on the last part of the trek put GearJunkie.com back in contention.
Speaking from the race’s ‘remote HQ’ in the Remota Hotel in Puerto Natales, Pavicic said: “It is like in hunting. Adidas are being chased hard. Gearjunkie are the hunters, and Adidas are the prey. This is going to be very interesting. I think it is the most exciting race we have had – where will they be by PC10, that is the big question!”
The two teams were separated by just more than two hours at the start of the trek, but reports from the field suggest they are finding the going tough and while there are no reports from GearJunkie.com, it is clear the mental challenge is beginning to hit adidas-TERREX.
Pavicic said: “I think they put too much energy in during the first two days and now they are paying for it. They now have other good teams behind them, although they don’t know what is happening behind them.
“They think the other teams are very far behind because it seemed they had a good advantage when they left PC8, because we had not heard from Gearjunkie at that point. But Gearjunkie’s short-cut made a big difference to the race.“
Gearjunkie made up time in the first trek by taking two innovative short-cuts and they spoke at PC8 about looking away from the red suggested route line on the map to take alternatives, capitalising on their climbing experience to take on terrain otherwise impossible for other teams.
Pavicic believes there could be short-cuts available in the two mountain sections between checkpoints 9 and 10, which on the standard route is expected to take a total of 30 hours at best. If so, he believes even five of the remaining seven teams could still be in with a chance of race victory.
“I think this is the best race we have ever had here,” said Pavicic. “We have five really, really good teams, many teams in good condition close in the front and huge diversity of countries overall.
“Right now we have two small groups – Adidas and Gearjunkie in front and the teams from France, Croatia and Denmark around four hours behind. But someone even from this last three can easily make this jump in the trekking section.
“One small mistake in there can cost a lot of time. Adidas has high pressure on their back. They are the only team that will not know their relative position, while the other teams can see the challenge ahead and know how much they need to catch up.”
Two other teams, Perdido en el Turba and East Wind, from Japan, remain in the race but out of contention for overall victory. Their aim now will be simply to make it to the finish – but Pavicic believes the Japanese team will also be pushing hard to improve on their seventh place finish from last year.
“After five teams we have two other good teams – and they are only thinking of the finish,” said Pavicic. “Japan is equal to last year in seventh but they are close to Perdido en el Turbal, just 20 minutes between them. They both slept overnight, so they will probably start together.”
