As I mentioned a few days back, the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race is now underway, with 16 teams hitting the course on Tierra del Fuego earlier today. Over the next eight days, the 60 elite adventure athletes taking part in the event will cover more than 600km, while facing the legendary Patagonia weather in the Darwin Mountains and across the turbulent waters of the Beagle Channel.
As usual, the format for this race is non-stop competition from start to finish. This isn’t a stage race with clearly defined beginnings and endings each day, and the coed teams of four from all over the planet will be pushed to their limits. The standard adventure racing disciplines come into play, including trekking, mountain biking, and sea kayaking. Of course, navigation will play a major role as well, and there is a ropes course for them to tackle as well.
Returning champs Helly Hansen-Prunesco are the team that everyone is gunning for, as the Brits came out of no where to win the race last year. But the field is full of experienced racers, and with the unpredictability of the terrain and weather in the region, there are a number of teams that could claim victory, or at the very least, stand on the podium. And if it’s anything like last year, it’ll come down to the final day before a winner is decided.
At the moment, I don’t see any way to track the team progress while they’re out on the course. Perhaps we’ll get something implemented in the next day or two, but barring that, we’ll have to rely on news updates from the race staff to see where everyone is at. Hopefully it’ll be a good, safe race for all involved, as they’ll be competing in one of the most stunning landscapes on Earth.
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Too bad there wasn't a better way to keep track of the racers. Maybe in the future there will be some sort of the tracking with GPS on the site. That would be fun to follow.
I agree Casey. In this day and age, it's fairly easy to implement a tracking system, and I know this race has had one in the past, although I recall that it was pretty buggy.
At Primal Quest we used the SPOT Satellite Messengers, and they worked great. It really helps to bring the action home for those of us following along from a distance.
Yep, infrequent updates on the race website is about the only way to follow. I too would love to follow via Spot or some other tracking system.
Based on some friends experiences with having raced down there though, is seems that it is a pretty bare-boned organization that struggles even with some basics that most competitors come to expect from races.
That said, they also reports it's an amazingly remote challenging beautiful race, if you survive it enough to enjoy it (but plan on being able to survive it independently in worst case situation).