Battling high winds, rain and a rough sea, the French team of Hewlett Packard beached in Bullfrog Marina late Tuesday, where it celebrated the end of a grueling 370-mile adventure and first place in Eco-Challenge '95.
The team needed just 81/2 days to complete the course, which start on a sagebrush flat east of Huntington on April 25.The winning team finished at 11:25 p.m. Team members are Philippe Dutilleux, 39; Francois Allemoz, 37; Jean-Jacques Clamer, 32; Hugues Arancio, 34; and Dominique Robert, 39.
Finishing second, at 1:45 a.m., in what is being considered a major upset, was the Nike team of Robyn Benincasa, 28, from Tempe; Owen West, 25, from Newport, R.I.; Shannon Michaels, 23, from Fountain Valley, Calif.; Rand Pipp, 35, from Redland, Calif.; and Dan Cabel, 35, from Lyons, Ind. The all-American team finished ahead of several teams with international experience.
In a virtual tie for third were the three teams of Gold's Gym, a mix of French and U.S. athletes, the Swiss Army Brands Team from France and the Southern Traverse team from New Zealand. All three docked at 2:56 a.m.
The Big Sky Montana team finished at 5:24 a.m., and Moving Spirit came in at 5:31 a.m.
The team with 72-year-old Helen Klein, named Operation Smile, is still in the race and is expected to finish late Wednesday or Thursday. The California grandmother faced the 1,200-foot vertical climb early Wednesday.
This is the same climb that nearly took the winning team out of the race. The group began the ascent late Monday. The five had completed only about a third of the climb when night fell.
Rather than risk injury, the team found a small ledge to wait for daylight. Around 4 a.m., however, a storm moved in and the five were caught out in the open in what was described as a major electrical storm and downpour. For about two hours they hugged the rock cliffs for safety. At first light they continued the climb and hit the summit early Tuesday.
Because of the threat of flash flooding on a difficult section of the race, called the "Black Hole," which would have required swimming long distances through ice-cold water trapped in narrow canyons, the course was altered and shortened.
This put the Hewlett Packard team into canoes near Hite on the upper reaches of Lake Powell shortly after noon on Tuesday. From there it was 50 miles of paddling to the finish.
The support crew predicted, given the tired condition of team members and the winds and the rough waters, it would take from 12 to 14 hours to canoe to Bullfrog.
The opportunity to get off their feet and sit, however, obviously sparked new life. Staying close to the shoreline and taking advantage of what smooth water there was, the two boats kept a strong and steady pace.
One team member reported later that they were concerned at this point about the pursuing teams. Canoeing was one of the team's weaker skills, where both the Southern Traverse and Gold's Gym teams considered it one of their better events.
"We could see the Southern Traverse team gaining on us," one of the winning team member said at the finish. "We knew they were following us, so we headed in a different direction and turned off our lights. That must have confused them. We were sure it was them coming in behind us, and we were very surprised to see it was the Nike team."
The Nike team, in fact, was just as surprised.
"We thought we were in fifth place," said one team member at the finish. "We were shocked to learn we were second." The two boats had apparently stayed close to the shoreline, out of sight of the leaders, and did not see the maneuver.
At the finish, the two teams joined in a celebration that included warm congratulations and sprayed champagne.
This is not the first such race for the winning team. It has competed in several in Europe. This one, they admitted, was the toughest, longest, most technical, and the most beautiful.
"Whenever we got down, what refreshed our spirits was the incredible landscape. It is beautiful," one of the members told officials.
The race is the first of what are expected to be a growing popularity in what are called "adventure races." While there have been several such races in Europe and South America, this was the first in the U.S.
At the start of the race, each team was given three horses. For the first 26 miles, three members rode while two jogged. For the next two days they negotiated through a maze of rock canyons and cliffs, then traveled 70 miles to a point north of Goblin Valley. Teams then mountain biked for 40 miles and completed a 120-mile desert hike to the Green River, where they loaded into rubber rafts and floated the the Colorado River and through Cataract Canyon.
Of the original 50 teams, only 22 remained on Wednesday.