Race Media

From: pierre arnaud le magnan
Subject: PATAGONIA AAC 2010


Here are few words about the race..

Actually the race started on Saturday when I went for race pack collection and discovered our racing number : 13!

Some people say it's bad luck, some others say it's good luck, well....read this and you'll decide for yourself.
 
A lot of strong teams for the first 10 spots as always, with Team CHAMPION SYSTEM being the winner for the past 4 editions...
We had 2 teams signed-up this year highly motivated to give it 200% !!!
 
It started with a pretty fast pace on the first 2kms run, for sure everybody wanted to get on CHI MA WAN MTB course the first as it is difficult to overtake...we managed to get into the second spot at the start of the single track called "The Extension", being held on this short leg, we had a bit of rest before we hit the road again and took off to take the lead  and start to open a gap....until 1 km later I started to loose air in my rear tyre ( I discovered later there was not enough stans left in my tyre to fill up a pinch flat ).... lost 1 minute or 2, got back on the bike to find out 500m later that the tyre was deflating again.....we stopped again and decided to put a tube .....another 3-4 mins lost.....so we restarted in 7th......remember our racing number ???
 
Fully motivated to come back we managed to get back to 2nd position at the end of the bike hammering it ( but still being careful with a rear tyre run with a tube on Chi Ma wan, people who know the place knows it is not the right setting for the ride ....). Team CHIRU bikes (Jeremy and Cosmo) were ahead of us with I guess a 3 mins lead...We decided to give it a good go, Kayaking being also one of our favorite with MTB. Reaching the next transition, we had a 2 min lead approximately and went for the run trying to take a steady pace...only to find we were caught by the end of the Small Chi Ma Wan run ..the cat and mouse game was on !!! Back on the kayak we gave it a go again, knowing more run was to come and was not to our advantage... but conditions were pretty hard on the water, and we were starting to pay the price of our effort from the Mountain bike .... and only opened a 2 to 3 mins gap on Cosmo and Jeremy at the end of the kayak and before the last 2 coasteering sections !!
 
As you can probably guess now, we got caught again!!  Cosmo was on fire in the previous technical sections and was hammering it on the way to the last abseil...we just arrived few seconds after them, but only 2 ropes, so got to wait for them to get down the rope before we could go....The last coasteering was pretty technical, we came back a little bit on them due to one navigation mistake, but that was not enough..and we finish 48 secs behind Team CHIRU BIKES. Congratulations to them, they ran a perfect race, consistent all the way and keeping just enough to finish strong !!!
 
1 Team CHIRU BIKES ( Cosmo Richards/Jeremy Ritcey )
2 Team CHIRU ENDURANCE ( Pierre Le Magnan/Mark Thirlwall )
3 Team CHAMPION System Adventure ( Ryan Blair/ Stone Tsang )
 
So what do you you think about Number 13 ???
 
We will be there at the next race !!

Pierre Arnaud le Magnan