New Balance Action Asia Challenge tests all in navigation and technical skills

Dec 14, 09

This years New Balance Action Asia Challenge was full of drama, surprises and lots of rocks at the 2009 event.

“The Action Asia event lived up too its reputation again as a technically tough course with everything thrown in, including fantastic rope sections and a waterfall abseil” said Hong Kong's Ryan Blair of the winning Team The North Face Flight who completed the course in 5 hours 13 minutes and 18 seconds.

Beijing’s Piers Touzel also on the winning team said “Yes 2 years in a row is great. The course was awesome. Special thanks must go to not only all the volunteers, but all the staff that had to carry all that rope up the river gully which I’m sure wasn’t easy".

Chiru Racing Bikes consisting of Pierre Le Magnan and Cosmo Richards fought hard thru the race to close the gap on the winners and to stay in front of experienced racers Team Fortis.

“We are delighted with our 2nd place result and under our new sponsor CHIRU BIKES we cannot be more happy. The race started at a crazy pace on the bike for the first hill to Pak Kung Au. Great weather and superb course, with orientation, steep bushy trails which we love as that's really adventure racing. We still need to express very hard our need for a proper mountain bike trail network in Hong Kong and especially Lantau”, said Le Magnan who’s team finished in 5 hours 25 minutes 2 seconds.

Pedro Ribeiro and Jeremy Ritcey tried hard, but the day just wasn't on their side. “The race started with the usual fast and furious pace and we worked hard to be North Face's shadow. When we finally took the lead on the first running section, we made a crucial navigation mistake that suddenly put us in 6th place and cost us any winning aspiration. We fought hard to catch the leaders, but they were just too good for us” said Macau’s Ribeiro of Team Fortis who finished 3rd overall in 5 hours 46 minutes 48 seconds with Hong Kong’s Ritcey.

The 50 km course consisted of 12 km of trail hiking and rock scrambling up technically demanding river gorges lined with fixed rope lines and a waterfall abseil taking up over 50% of the participants total time.  Over 32 kilometers of mountain biking including very large elevation climbs to the Pak Kung Au and the top of Sham Wat Road just below the Big Bhudda before some high speed descents. A short 100m swim off a pier in low tide making competitors work out the fast way trying to avoid cramping coming off a long bike ride was thrown in too cool them off with the race finishing with a 6km ocean kayak and a 20 meter bridge abseil.

Majority of the course was not marked with teams getting maps 30 minutes before the race to navigate the 14 check points. Majority of the teams found all the check points, while a few teams lost their way by either loosing their maps, not reading their maps or one of the more common excuses just following the team in front of them. Some of the working staff on the course commented it was interesting too see competitors coming from different directions to some of the checkpoints.

Race organizers have received positive feedback and will consider doing another Lantau Spring/Summer adventure race again.

Special thanks must again go to New Balance, CLP and Towngas as the race really couldn't have happened without them. Supporting the race and contributing to the success was Patagonia, Nototel, Dymocks, Action Asia Magazine, Jelly Belly, Gatorade, Meko, Marathon Sports, Giga Sports, PURE, Fat Angelos, Chamonix, Budweiser, RC Outfitters, Optic Nerve, Pacific Coffee, LSG Sky Chefs, Neil Pryde and the Action Asia Foundation.

Photos and video will be up before Christmas at www.actionasiaevents.com.