Subaru Primal Quest

Part of the reason for small blogs this week, apart from work, has been because of following the Subaru Primal Quest, one of the big adventure races of the year, and it's website can be found here.

Ever since the pioneering days of Steve Gurney and John Howard, Kiwis have always seemed to be rather adept at this "sport" and the reason why I follow it is (unfortunately) some New Zealand orienteers get attracted to adventure racing, and are attractive to teams due to their navigational skills. Unfortunate as adventure racing is a little more financial than orienteering, and who can blame orienteers farking off in search of a few dolleros at something they might be good at?

In the Subaru Primal Quest, NZ's No.1 orienteer Chris Forne has been snapped up by US-sponsored team Go Lite Timberland, which has another Kiwi orienteer/adventure racer Aaron Prince at the helm. But what gets me about adventure racing is it's very much an unstructured sport, and luck always seems to deal a hand when it doesn't need to. Also the "rules" (I use the term loosely) never seem to be strictly enforced and organisers aren't exactly consistent in their application. I won't bore you with the reasons behind those cryptic statements, except that a few years covering the Southern Traverse during my photography days has given me an insight into this "sport".

But is adventure racing a sport or a gimmick? How can you treat a sport seriously when, to use this year's SPQ as an example, they start off with a section where they are given a horse? Now read some of the pieces from the News on the SPQ website, and you find such things as:

"As a result of the team’s hard work they are ranked 56th in a field of 89. This is impressive, when you consider that they crossed CP5 dead last, largely thanks to a stubborn horse named Maynard. Maynard decided early on that the world’s toughest race wasn’t his bag, and he let his feelings be known. The team spent two hours coaxing Maynard to no avail. In the end, two wranglers had to come and retrieve the recalcitrant horse and the team continued on, without their equine fifth teammate. The rest of the horse section took them three hours on foot."

Or this:

"Beginning with the Primal Quest kickoff, Team GoLite has faced down adversity. Just miles into the race, at the first mandatory vet check stop for their horse, their steed had blood coming out of its nose. The team was forced to skip the rest of the horseback riding checkpoints and proceed to CP5 where they were given a new mount. GoLite then had to re-trace their steps and hit all the checkpoints they missed, putting the team nearly two hours behind the race leaders."

So, because their horse had a bleeding attack, they had to go and get another one, re-trace their steps and lose 2 hours. After 4 days into this 6 day race, GoLite are sitting third, a couple of hours behind the leaders.

Sport is about competing on an even playing field. When adventure racing organisers get rid of the unnecessary luck factor that frequently pervades their races, perhaps then it can be considered a sport, rather than a gimmick.

P.S. Oh yeah, I forgot to say: at the start, when the 90-odd teams were lining up and given their horse for their first section, guess what they used to signal the start of the race with? Yep, a gunshot. How fuckin' stupid was that? (cue mass stampede)