Adventure Racing World Championships Begin This Weekend!

The Adventure Racing World Championships are set to get underway this weekend at the Bimbache Extrem in Spain. The race officially gets underway on Sunday, Oct. 3rd and will run until next Friday, October 8th. 53 of the best teams in the world, including the newly renamed Team Nike, who now race under the Team Blackwater moniker, will be competing to be crowned world champs.

The international teams are expected to begin arriving tomorrow, and over the next two days they’ll have some free time and mandatory gear and skills checks to contend with. Then on Sunday, the race gets underway at 8AM from the Avila city center, where the teams will begin their trekking, biking, paddling and navigating adventure.

With just days to go, I caught this interesting article posted at both Adventure World Magazine and on the Untamed Adventure website. The article asks where the tops American teams are in this year’s race, as there seems to be very few actually competing in the ARWC. The article postulates some reasons as to why this is the case, with some excellent insights as to where all the American teams have gone and why they aren’t competing well on an international level. Really interesting stuff, and it’s a shame that we don’t see more American teams taking part in this great event.

Of course, it’s not like American’s haven’t done well in the sport. For years Nike was the dominant team in the world, but for a variety of reasons that hasn’t been the case the past two or three years. It’ll be interesting to see how well they do in this event though, as they really haven’t taken on big international competition in awhile. And lets face it, the sport has been growing more abroad than here in the States, also for a variety of reasons. I think it’s safe to say that the best teams in the world now reside in Europe and Oceania.

Regardless, it should be a fun event to watch. Let’s hope they provide us with good updates and tracking so fans can follow along with the race.

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Kraig Becker

Kraig is an outdoor and adventure travel writer based in Nashville, TN. Over the course of his career, he has contributed to numerous online and print outlets, including Popular Mechanics, Gear Junkie, Outside Online, National Geographic, Digital Trends, Business Insider, TripSavvy, about.com, and of course The Adventure Blog.