Four-star adventure

Quartets from around the world prepare for 450-mile Raid World Championship. Favorites include three Colorado teams.

Brian Metzler, Special to the News

Saturday, September 2, 2006

GUNNISON - Bryan Wickenhauser, Jari Kirkland, Jon Brown and Eric Sullivan might seem like regular, hardworking citizens of Gunnison County.

But at some point during each the day, they transform themselves into the multitasking action heroes of Team Salomon Crested Butte. Each is a strong competitor individually, but as a foursome, they can mountain bike, trail run, navigate, paddle and maneuver through ropes courses with the best adventure racing teams in the world.

They've been training like fiends in recent weeks in preparation for the Raid World Championship adventure race in a remote section of eastern Canada. The 450-mile race, which begins next Saturday, is expected to take five to seven days to complete as it winds through the rivers, lakes, forests and mountains of the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec.

The team owns a handful of top-15 showings in international races, including a fifth-place showing in last summer's Primal Quest adventure race in Utah.

But being from Colorado, it can be hard for the team to catch a break. The state is home to a couple of the world's top teams, including Nike PowerBlast, the most successful team in the history of adventure racing, so finishing on the podium here is often no easier than it is at a big international race.

"It's encouraging because just about any race in Colorado can be a world championship-caliber adventure race going on based on the teams that are there," Wickenhauser said. "We get to compete against the best in the world every time, and that makes us a better team."

The Raid World Championship, being held in North America for the first time, is one of the most prestigious adventure races in the world and carries a prize purse of $180,000. It's the reincarnated version of the fabled Raid Gauloises, which started the international adventure racing boom in New Zealand in 1989.

Nineteen U.S. teams participated in one of the three qualifying events for this year's big event, but only three made the cut and each is based in Colorado. Teams Nike PowerBlast, Spyder and Salomon Crested Butte could all conceivably finish among the top 10 in a field that will include top teams from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several European countries.

While the team's success over the past couple of years earned it a sponsorship deal with Salomon, a manufacturer of outdoor apparel and equipment, the team members work as hard as they play. Wickenhauser, 33, runs a commercial leasing company; Kirkland, 29, is an innkeeper; Brown, 34, publishes a Gunnison County directory; and Sullivan, 25, works at a restaurant.

Training twice a day when they can squeeze in time, they typically group up for running, paddling and mountain biking workouts.

"Having my own business allows some flexibility to get out and train," Wickenhauser says. "But we all find time to get out, regardless of what our jobs are. It's all stuff we love to do."

They began racing together only three years ago, but their individual talents and collective passion for adventure racing quickly put them among the sport's elite.

They've raced everywhere from Australia to Andorra in the past three years and plan to race in Ecuador in the fall. They've had their share of ups and downs while learning the nuances of racing for several days at a time with little sleep, but they've been able to glean a lot from watching and following veteran competitors and fellow Colorado residents Mike Kloser, Billy Mattison and Ian Adamson.

"We have a pretty close-knit team," says Kirkland, who is also a pro mountain biker and Xterra triathlete. "I think we're just getting better, too. With more experience, we're just getting faster and smarter."

The average age of Salomon Crested Butte's athletes is just over 30, about 10 years younger than Nike PowerBlast. Still, that foursome of Kloser (Vail), Sari Anderson (Carbondale), Michael Tobin (Boise, Idaho) and Richard Ussher (New Zealand) figures to be one of the teams to beat in Canada, based on its vast experience and its win at Primal Quest this summer.

"I think our chances are good, if we race well," says Nike PowerBlast's Kloser. "But it's adventure racing, so anything can happen. We just need to keep ourselves found, and we're much better off."

Nike PowerBlast also won the recent Adventure Racing World Championship in Sweden, but the foursome in that race was Ussher and three athletes who aren't racing in Canada - Boulder's Adamson, Breckenridge's Monique Merrill and Gunnison's Dave Wiens.

Boulder-based Team Spyder, which placed seventh at that race in Sweden, should also be a podium-contender at the Raid World Championship. That team will be composed of Boulder's Dave Mackey and Travis Macy, as well as Australians John Jacoby and Narelle Ash.

Wiens, ironically, lives in the same neighborhood as Wickenhauser, Sullivan and Brown and has competed with Salomon Crested Butte on a few occasions.

The former pro mountain biker took up adventure racing a couple of years ago and now has a world championship trophy that he can set on the mantel next to the bronze medal his wife, Susan DeMattei, earned in mountain biking at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

"We're going to pick his brain," Wickenhauser says. "There aren't many secrets out there, but it will be good to hear some of the stories about how things went down in the race. Every little bit helps."