An emerging adventure

Endurance sport finds change afoot for summer events

Brian Metzler, Special to the News

Saturday, December 23, 2006

The once red-hot sport of adventure racing appears to be going through some growing pains. Despite recent news of major changes, Colorado figures to remain a hotbed for multidiscipline solo and team endurance events in 2007.

In recent weeks, adventure racing's most prominent events - U.S.-based Primal Quest and the French-produced Raid World Championship - altered plans for 2007, and one of the sport's icons has decided to retire. Those events carried the sport's largest prize purses at $250,000 and $90,000, respectively.

The fifth edition of Primal Quest, originally scheduled for an international setting, has been postponed until at least 2008. Although the 2006 edition of the 100-team race in Moab, Utah, sold out in a matter of days, the event's organizers have had trouble garnering sponsorship.

Meanwhile, Saga Events has scrapped its X-adventure World Cup qualifying series of 24-hour races and its seven-day Raid World Championship event in favor of a five-day stage race in France. Colorado teams have regularly placed in the top 10 at Primal Quest and the Raid World Championship.

Boulder's Ian Adamson, a three-time winner of Eco-Challenge and Primal Quest, recently announced his retirement after more than 15 years in the sport.

He's the only athlete to win all the world's major races in the past 10 years, but a few, including Eco-Challenge, China's Outdoor Quest and the ESPN X Games race, are extinct.

Adventure racing is an endurance sport in which coed teams of three athletes mountain bike, paddle, hike, climb, run and navigate nonstop through the wilderness in events that last from three hours to seven days. But some of the limiting factors of the sport are events can be difficult to organize, expensive and gear- intensive.

Despite the changes, adventure racing is growing at a grass- roots level in the United States, and a few Colorado events are at the forefront of that movement.

Organizers of the Teva Mountain Games in Vail are considering shortening or eliminating the six-hour adventure race but plan to debut a new event for multitasking athletes.

The Ultimate Adventure Challenge from June 1-3 will involve men, women and teams competing in a trail run, cross-country mountain bike race, road bike hill climb and possibly other events.

The lowest combined times in each category will win Ultimate Adventure Challenge titles and a yet-to-be-determined cash prize.

The Teva Mountain Games will take place the same time as the 2007 Adventure Racing World Championship in Scotland, another factor in the possible changes to the adventure race, Teva Mountain Games organizer Joel Heath said.

"The formula for success in adventure racing has been incredible athletes doing incredible things from incredible places," Heath said. "But if that's not working from a mass-market perspective, we need to make it a participatory event, one that is accessible to a lot of people."

That new Ultimate Adventure Challenge is similar to that of the new Mountain Sports Games, scheduled July 2-7 in Mont Blanc, France. It will maintain the coed teams of adventure racing but will scrap the nonstop race format in favor of teams and individuals going head-to-head in one discipline a day.

On tap for the inaugural event will be mountain biking, white- water paddling, mountaineering, orienteering and rope course challenges.

Meanwhile, Durango-based Adventure Xstream, the state's largest race producer, has 11 events planned in Colorado and Utah next year, including a 12-hour race in Buena Vista. About a dozen adventure races were held in Colorado in 2006, making it one of the top states for the sport in the United States.

Vail's Mike Kloser, captain of Team Nike-Powerblast, said he likes the idea of the new concepts, especially because they maintain the element of team competitions. Kloser's team has won four adventure racing world titles and four Primal Quest races since 2002.

"I really wish (TV producer) Mark Burnett would come back with Eco-Challenge," he said. "But for now, we'll just cross our fingers and hope someone pulls together another big multiday event."