Team Seagate Leads the Godzone Adventure on Day One

Team Seagate

Media Release from 100% PURE Racing

10.3.2013
For Immediate Release

TEAM SEAGATE LEADS THE GODZONE ADVENTURE ON DAY ONE

Aoraki/Mount Cook that dominates the Southern Alps mountain range has been the perfect start line for the six day GODZone Adventure today with thirty five teams heading out into the dark at 6.00 this morning from outside The Hermitage.

Its been a hot days racing as teams ran up to the start of the Annette Glacier in the early hours, jostling for position to be one of the first onto the fixed rope section that would take them up high on the glacier. Team Seagate lead from the start and Race Director Warren Bates says its not surprising.

“ Nathan will always say that they are not worried about anyone else – so they just would have headed out there and are doing their own thing. But it would have been their strategy to be the first team on the ropes because they would know that a bottle neck would occur there if they were back down in the middle”, says Warren.

Seagate continued to dominate heading over Mt Ollivia and down to the Mueller Hut and then along to TA1 situated at the Blue Lakes near the Tasman River. Team Harraway were chasing them hard all the way and both teams literally got on the river at the same time.

“ Right now in the middle of the afternoon the front teams are still pretty close but Seagate have blitzed the river paddle that we thought would take several hours and they are now making their way across Lake Pukaki to TA2 at Braemar Station.

‘” It’s been a wicked white water canoe down the Tasman river from what we see so far – Stu Lynch from Team Harraway who is a highly experienced racer took a swim on the second set of rapid which shows how much white water the teams are having to navigate.”

Race start

In third place is Team Macpac with 100 meters separating them with Team Thule. Both are paddling fast.

Meanwhile back in the mid field teams are slowly moving through to TA1 from the mountain section. Over half the field have made it to this part so far. Many have made a simple mistake of taking a wrong turn on the way to the Blue Lake put in and have been climbing up to high point before turning around and coming back down. They will all be aware that they need to get onto the river before the Dark Zone kicks in at 8pm tonight.

The teams have been treated to a magnificent view of the huge icebergs that carved of the Tasman Glacier earlier this month. “ When we recc’d this part of the course there were no ice bergs so it's a fantastic bonus for everyone here today”, says Warren.

A full list of registered teams can be found at http://www.godzoneadventure.com/resources/team-list/

Follow the live race website here
http://live.godzoneadventure.com/ or facebook updates here http://www.facebook.com/godzoneadventure

ENDS

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