World Championship in Pantanal is soon entering the 6 day of racing and team Haglöfs Silva is still on 2nd position with Swedish friends SAFAT chasing a few hours behind. Seagate (NZ) still far ahead on front. The gap to 4th placed Columbia (Spain) and 5th placed Estonians has grown during the last hours thanks to successful navigation from the two Swedish teams and less successful navigation from Columbia and the Estonians. Navigation has been a big part of this race and all teams have faced great challenges and according to satellite tracker not only been able to follow the ideal route…
photo: Erik Putsep
As almost all sections of this race have taken way longer than expected, organisers were forced to shorten the route drastically in order to get any team to finish line before they miss their respectively flights back home. Section 9 (MTB) shortened, Section 10 (kayak) taken away and Section 11 shortened (this was the planned short course for teams back in the field). Overall, probably some 24 hour of less racing. Our guess is that thanks to this change, three teams from the full course may make it to finish line in time to price giving.
Teams in position 6-7 at transition 5 (Merrell (SA) and Godzone (UK) started the 6th leg but turned back after a number of hours, stating it was impossible to continue. After discussions with race organisation, course was closed and all teams who had not started this section was taken by airplane to transition 6, cutting out the long and difficult packraft section that Haglöfs Silva needed 37 hours to complete (Seagate and SAFAT 39 hours). This is the same section which Columbia and the Estonians still have to finish.
So, after 5 days of racing, only 5 teams are on the full course and hopefully all those 5 teams (2nd and 3rd Swedish) will make it to the finishline. Following the tracker after this course change can be somewhat confusing as there are some short course teams (including Swedish Peak Peformance, Merrell, Godzone and Tecnu) ahead of Haglöfs Silva and SAFAT. Non of the teams that did not complete the 7th leg can beat our Haglöfs Silva team, as long as they make it to the finish line. Fingers crossed they do!!
For sure they are suffering from heat, exhaustion and all kinds of blisters, but we are confident that after almost a week facing all kinds of challenges (except freezing) they will do anything they can to make sure it has not been in vain.