This Portuguese Race Director has obviously got a bit of an evil streak!
Keep checking our Blog page for the latest updates and reports 
Racing is getting more complex and results more confusing as the final race cut off looms at the end of a monster 160km mountain bike leg. Teams (apart from Nike/Beaver Creek) are starting to miss checkpoints (CPs) and Bonus CPs as they try to make sure that they reach the end of Stage 4 before the midnight deadline (1pm NZ time).
Orionhealth.com are still amongst the leaders but at the end of the 60km trek that commenced Stage 4 they have dropped another CP which has pushed them into 4th place. This is according to the Leaderboard - extract below. (Note: things are changing so fast that the Leaderboard is probably not going to be keeping up perfectly ... Annie (Nga Rakau support crew member) has just released another update (below) which explains that at least a few things might not be correct on the board.)
| Pos. | Team | CPs | Bon. | Time |
| 1 | #46 Team Nike/Beaver Creek | 36 | 5 | 36:08:03 |
| 2 | #38 Helly Hansen - Prunesco | 34 | 4 | 38:44:11 |
| 3 | #08 Lundhags Adventure | 34 | 4 | 39:36:38 |
| 4 | #01 OrionHealth.com | 33 | 4 | 36:28:19 |
| 5 | #07 Quechua | 31 | 4 | 38:13:44 |
| 6 | #48 OS-Direct Adventure team | 31 | 3 | 39:50:01 |
| 7 | #10 Navigator RaidLight | 31 | 0 | 32:19:02 |
| 8 | #04 Buff Thermocool | 30 | 4 | 38:54:26 |
| 9 | #02 OUTDOOR EXPERIENCES | 30 | 1 | 35:57:08 |
| 10 | #30 CONDOR AIRLINES | 29 | 2 | 37:12:22 |
| 11 | #20 ERTIPS | 29 | 1 | 35:09:56 |
| 12 | #25 Extreme Challenger/IGeoE | 27 | 1 | 33:19:14 |
| 13 | #05 OpavaNet/Tilak/Merida | 27 | 1 | 34:07:53 |
The most recent Sleepmonsters race report said that Wayne, Stuart, Brent and Anna were looking reasonably fresh which is great news as they will definitely need to keep their feet and their minds moving fast to make sure that they keep in the hunt to defend their World Championship title.
Orionhealth.com "storm the castle" ... gently! (Photo courtesy of www.ARWC2009.com)
Click here for the full Sleepmonsters report: http://www.sleepmonsters.com/racereport.php?page_action=rep&race_id=7511&article_id=6216
Annie's latest update ...
Waiting for end of Stage 4
The teams were trekking to there, and 'storming the castle' by abseiling up one of the walls. Would have been fabulous.
We're now waiting at TA4 for the leading teams to arrive.
We are expecting lots of teams in by 9pm, so they can catch some sleep in transition before the next cutoff at midnight tonight, although this 105km MTB leg is taking longer than I think people expected.
Several of the teams' GPS don't seem to have reported for some time, so it's a bit hard to know where things are at. The leaderboard as at the end of the last leg looks sort of correct. Two things that I know are wrong are that (1) Lundhags pulled out last night [Lynne - See correction below], and (2) Nga Rakau haven't been credited with the CPs from the big MTB yesterday at this stage, several of which they definitely did get.
At this stage I think Nga Rakau are intending to short cut the first part of stage 5. Short-cutting doesn't put you out of the race, it just means you don't have the opportunity to get the CPs on that leg. The stage begins with a short trek to the river, then a 45km paddle. Given that the paddle yesterday was about 25km, and took about 7 hours, this paddle doesn't look like a good option, with the race notes saying it includes a lake with 'tricky navigation, especially at night' (which it will be), and reportedly includes a 2km portage. The Portugese boys who are transporting the plastic kayaks around tell us the teams won't be able to use the kayak trolleys for that portage because the ground is too rocky. Carrying those things for 2kms could be ugly.
The weather forecast for today was light rain (which didn't happen, actually it was a beautiful day), and more rain for tomorrow and Saturday. If that eventuates, it will make things even tougher for the last day.
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