After starting off the Land Rover G4 Challenge with a third place on Sunday, South African competitor Chester Foster had a few problems following a co-ordination error on Monday.
After starting off the Land Rover G4 Challenge with a third place on Sunday, South African competitor Chester Foster had a few problems after a co-ordination error on Monday.
The challenge started in New York on Sunday and during the next four weeks 16 competitors from every continent will participate in a mix of driving and adventure sports. The competition is split into four consecutive week-long stages in New York, the Eastern Seaboard, South Africa, Western Australia and the Wild West of America. The challenge ends on April 26 in the Moab desert.
Based on scores achieved at the international selections event in the UK two months ago, the top eight performers had to pick a team-mate from the remaining eight without knowing the relative scores of those eight competitors.
The pairings will stay together for the rest of the first challenge stage this week, and the stage one scores will be used to determine the selections for the second stage in South Africa starting on April 6.
Foster selected Guy Andrews of Australia. “I picked Guy because he is a great athlete and by having him on my team, I can stop him from beating me on this stage!” said Foster.
In the first stage in Manhattan on Sunday, Foster and Andrews drove down a subway line with crucial sections removed and negotiated a NY taxi, parked across the course and forcing the pair to take to a one track ramp which tilted their Freelander almost 35 degrees. The pair finished in third place with Tim Pickering of England and Paul McCarthy of Ireland taking the top position.
On Monday, the challenge moved to the Catskill Mountains of New York State for the first remote section of stage one. “This has been one of the hardest winters on record up here,” said event director Nick Horne. “Just last week the temperatures were up in the seventies. But typically, come the start of this Challenge, we get snow.”
“Just working out where the tents are and how to work our volcano kettle is a test on the first night, in the dark and in freezing temperatures,” said Italy’s Alberta Chiappa, one of two women in the event. “I am glad I brought my thermals.”
The tests included running and snowshoeing, mountain biking, climbing and kayaking on the Hudson river.
Navigation proved to be a major stumbling block for many of the teams. Pickering and McCarthy instantly made a wrong turn from Frost Valley.
“You make a mistake and you can’t dwell on it…you have to keep going because the odds are good that next time someone else will make a mistake and then it’s game on,” said Foster, a victim of one of the day’s harshest problems. He and Andrews got a GPS co-ordinate wrong by one crucial degree. That sent them on a wild goose chase over a mountain rather than on a short cut down a river bed.
The results of the stage will be given later today, just before the teams leave for South Africa.
Different vehicles will be used in each stage:
Stage 1 (East USA): Freelander ES 2.5V6 and 215/65R16 Wrangler MT/R
Stage 2 (South Africa): Defender 110 2.5TD5 and 235/85R16 Wrangler MT/R
Stage 3 (Australia): Range Rover Vogue 4.4 V8 and 255/55R19 Wrangler MT/R
Stage 4 (West USA): Discovery ES 4.6 V8 and 225/75R16 Wrangler MT/R.
