South Coast welcomes adventure racers

THE South Coast has put out the welcome mat for the 40 four-person, mixed gender teams from 18 countries, including South Africa, now converging on Port Edward Holiday Resort to take part in Expedition Africa 2014.

This gruelling endurance test, a 500km adventure race, starts this Sunday, May 25. While the front runners are expected to complete the rugged course in four days, slower teams can take up to eight days to reach the finish.

Race spokesman Lisa de Speville described Expedition Africa as ‘a bit Survivor does Amazing Race, except no one gets voted off the island’. Instead competitors use their feet, mountain bikes and kayaks to negotiate the route all the way to the finish, through tough South Coast and Wild Coast terrain, using maps and compasses. Along the race route they have to find their way though a series of checkpoints and transition stations, completing the extremely difficult course without much sleep and on a limited diet. They keep their non-perishable food in their race crates, replenishing their back packs at transition stages.

According to Lisa, race organisers were thrilled to have so many foreign teams – from 17 different countries – in the starting line-up. South African competitors were well represented and came from all over South Africa including Cape Town, Durban, Bloemfontein, East London, Knysna, Johannesburg, Pretoria and many smaller centres in between, she said.

As for the teams to watch, Lisa believed the New Zealand team, ‘Seagate’, stood out as a possible winner as did the Swedish ‘Haglofs Silva’ team, which raced in South Africa last year.

“I’d also be tempted to put some money of the American ‘Tecnu’ team. They did really well here last year,” she said. Participants also hail from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Ireland, Namibia, Northern Ireland, Russia and Switzerland.

Lisa is not discounting the local talent.

“South Africa’s ‘Merrell Adventure Addicts’ and ‘Team Cyanosis’ are almost a given for top placements. I am also expecting solid performances from ‘Black Diamond’ and ‘Castle Lite’ as well as ‘Olympus’, ‘Jabberwock’, ‘Penny Pinchers’, ‘Warriors’ and dark horse ‘Team Painted Wolf’,” she said.

The multi-disciplinary event is organised by husband and wife team, Heidi and Stephan Muller, who have raced together here and overseas.

Expedition Africa has Port Edward as its base and competitors will be staying at the Port Edward Holiday Resort before and after the event. The opening ceremony takes place tomorrow (Friday) at 7pm and the teams take part in a community outreach project on Saturday morning.

The race starts on Sunday at 7am and the prize-giving dinner takes place the following Saturday, May 31, at 7pm, six hours before the final, official cut-off.

The event has been warmly welcomed by Tourism South Coast.