PQ 2008: The Gear Junkie Interviews Don Mann

pq 2008 temp
Yesterday we had our first news on the return of Primal Quest in 2008 and today we get even more information in the form of an interview with Don Mann by none other than The Gear Junkie himself, Stephen Regenold.

The interview has some revealing information without going into too many details just yet. For instance, we find out that the race is scheduled for next year around the May/June time frame. We also learn that the race will be 10 days in length once more, and will be held in the United States, squashing the rumors that it would go international for the first time. Mann even hints that the race will go old school, saying that it will resemble the old Raid style races in many ways, with some of the bigger production values scaled back, but he does promise the race will be “even more epic than Utah”.

Mann does confirm that the purse has been reduced in size from $250,000 to $100,000, but says “it’ll still be the biggest purse in the sport”. I guess he missed the memo from yesterday in which the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge was announced and that it will have a $200,000 purse.

This is an insightful interview for fans of the sport. Personally, I like what he says about getting back to the basics of adventure racing. While I loved watching the Utah race unfold last year, I’m not a big fan of horses in the sport. They’re just too unpredictable and can really hurt a teams chances. To find out that they spent $100,000 just on the horse start, just re-affirms to me that they can remove those types of events from the race. I can’t wait to find out more about the race though, and I’m already looking forward to it, even though it’s a year away.

Kraig Becker

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