| 10/27/2001 | Team Salomon/Eco-Internet of the United States won the eighth Eco-Challenge race Thursday, October 25, with Team PureNZ.com of New Zealand coming a close second. Team Spie of France was third. Eco-Challenge: New Zealand will air on USA Network April 22-25, 2002.
Team EarthLink and Team Pearl Izumi, both of the United States, tied for fourth, traveling together.
Fifty-two of the 67 teams that began the race Sunday morning were still racing Thursday night. Many of them were not expected to reach the finish line for at least a day or two. Five teams that had been disqualified were still racing unofficially and seven more were eliminated and off the course.
Team PureNZ.com grabbed the lead within three hours of the race start Sunday and held it until about 12 hours before the finish line.
About 1 a.m. Thursday, Team Salomon/Eco-Internet passed the New Zealanders and held the lead until reaching the finish line in Glendhu Bay at 1:12 p.m.
The New Zealanders were only 22 minutes behind. Team Spie appeared at 5:54 p.m., and the two fourth-place teams at 8:44 p.m.
The Eco-Internet team, a highly experienced squad that included two members of the team that won the Eco-Challenge in Borneo last year, covered the 225-mile (368-kilometer) course in an unexpectedly swift time (unofficial) of four days, 5 hours, 34 minutes.
"We're the tortoise," said Eco-Internet captain Ian Adamson, characterizing the strategy that won the race for the Americans.
The determining factor became the New Zealanders' decision not to sleep, but to set a blistering pace 24-hours a day, across snow-covered mountains and down whitewater rivers.
"The Kiwis have been saying all along that Kiwis don't need sleep," said Race Director Mark Burnett. But by midnight Wednesday, after four days of maximum exertion without sleep, the New Zealanders "literally could not walk a straight line from sleep deprivation," he said.
The Eco-Internet team, which included two members who had won the Eco-Challenge twice before, had the experience to know that sleep deprivation would eventually leave them too mentally impaired to function, Burnett observed. The Americans stopped to sleep only 2-4 hours a night, but that was enough to keep their minds working and "minimize our mistakes," Adamson said.
The Kiwis eventually had to stop to sleep and the Americans went past them about 1 a.m. on the final leg, Adamson said.
The race covered a grueling course in the chill, snow-capped mountains of New Zealand's South Island, requiring competitors to ride horseback, run, hike, climb mountains, ride bicycles up and down a steep mountain and paddle rubber rafts down whitewater rivers and across alpine lakes.
Salomon/Eco-Internet was captained by Adamson, a corporate trainer from Boulder, Colo. He and teammate Michael Kloser of Vail, Colo., were both on last year's winning squad.
Joining them were Sarah Ballantyne, a massage therapist from Boulder, Colo., who was on the team that won the 1999 Eco-Challenge in Morocco, and Michael Tobin.
Teams are disqualified if they lose a member through injury or other cause, fail to make a passport control point in the maximum allotted time or violate other race rules. Teams disqualified but continuing on the course, unranked, were Team AXN Hong Kong, Team AdventureTeam.com of the United States, Team Dutch Mountains of the Netherlands, Team Native Experience of the United States and Team Strange & Carpenter of the United States.
Out of the race were Team Condor Salomon of Argentina, Team North Pole Expedition of Finland, Team Sabah Malaysia, Team Dark Dog Compaq of Uruguay and Team Bones of the United States.www.ecochallenge.com
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