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Next 24hrs of Southern Traverse -15-16th Nov '08 |
| Dates are set and we'll see you on the 15-16th November 2008. Once again, the race will be staged in the Queenstown area, and we look forward to a new era with the support of Naming right sponsor Fairydown. |
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24 hr option in Classic Southern Traverse |
| The Classic southern traverse in Hanmer on the 11-13th April offers a 24 hr race option - simply go to the Classic Southern Traverse site for further information. |
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| View News in Brief Archive |
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16/05/2008 1:17:42 a.m. |
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24hrs of Southern Traverse Results -2007 |
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Some of the most experienced adventure racers in New Zealand's tackled the 24 Hours of Southern Traverse on a challenging and spectacularly scenic course in the Southern Lakes region yesterday, with line honours going to the local Queenstown Team Icebreaker R & R Sport .
The team included Mark Williams, Haydn Key and Mitch Murdoch, along with Matt Woods (Dunedin) all who are recognised as some of New Zealand's leading adventure racers.
Icebreaker R and R Sport won the 112km race in 14 hours 20 minutes just under an hour ahead of the predicted pace. Twenty one minutes behind were the highly experienced Queenstown Paper Plus team of Bill Godsall (Cromwell) and Jim Cotter (Dunedin). who had been setting the pace all day.
The race began at midnight Friday and the first stage took the teams in the darkness up on to the Crown Range.
Race director Geoff Hunt says that the only way you can guarantee that every team has a fair share of the night experience is to start the race in the middle of the night.
"We have had a great response from the athletes last year with the midnight start so we decided to repeat it. ."
With the first stage being a steep climb from Arrowtown to the top of the Crown Range the teams already begun to split slightly. IceBreaker R & R Sport and Paper Plus Queenstown team lead through this stage but were closely chased by the Murray Thomas led Kapa Design Gallery team and the Queenstown Frontrunner team.
As the teams disappeared into the clear starry night the headlamps could occasionally be seen flashing on the tussocks as the teams moved up onto the second stage, a 15km trek along the ridge line of the Crown range to Cardrona ski field.
What appeared to be relatively simple on the map begun t o sort the field as teams struggled to find the correct ridge from Mt Sale that lead onto the connecting Cardrona ridgelines. Again, the experienced heads in the front teams prevailed and it was here that both Icebreaker R & R Sport and Paper Plus Queenstown broke away from the field.
By the Cardrona checkpoint both these teams had opened up a gap of one and half hours on the chasing teams.
The next stage took teams on a tough 35km mountain bike via the Roaring Meg pack track to the Kawarau River. With only 600 metres of ascension and over 2500 metres of descending this was described as a highlight of the event. Some teams however found the single track down the Roaring Meg catchment tough and all teams reported problems with punctures from the notorious Spaniards.
This time the veteran Paper Plus Queenstown team lead into and out of the transition as the teams set out on the short 9kms paddle to the Bannockburn inlet. Both teams arrived and left together onto the last trek, a 15km trek up through the historic Casrricktown gold mining area and along one of the many water races that dot the central Otago region.
It was right at the end of this stage that Icebreak R & R Sport finally made a break on Paper Plus Queenstown and arrived at TA5 with a six minute lead. After a fast 14km descent on mountain bike down the Nevis Road they had increased this lead to thirteen minutes and during the last 11km paddle across Lake Dunstan to the Lowburn Inlet finish gained another 7 minutes with the advantage of paddling double kayaks.
The hardluck story went to the first time team “Harry and Lloyd” from Invercargill who had had a great first adventure race only to misplace their guidebook on the second last leg. As a result they were unable to find the last remote checkpoint and event though they finished the race in a creditable 5th place were relegated to unranked due to missing that checkpoint.
Matt Woods from winning Icebreaker R & R Sport says the 24 Hours of Southern Traverse was a highly competitive race.
"We had some close racing all day with Paper Plus. It was a really good battle with them which was great because while being good friends we certainly did not want the old boys to beat us across the line.”
The course drew widespread praise for its diversity and its fantastic scenery.
Geoff Hunt says he is pleased with the reaction to the course.
"We always work to try and achieve a race course that we would want to race on. This actually forms part of our company mission statement and each year we strive to achieve that. This year the trekking legs were mostly uphill which lead to downhill mountain bike stages and this was well appreciated by all the racers.
Results Overall
1 Icebreaker R&R Sport 14:20 (4 person team)
2 Paper Plus Queenstown 14:41 (2 person team)
3 Kapa Design Gallery 16:56 (4 person team) |
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| Team of 4 registration form |
| Team of 2 registration form |
| results 2007 |
| 24hrs of Southern Traverse results -2006 |
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