Being the dilligent “Bigtime Consulting” employee that I am, I thought I should probably look through the bios of the teams who scratched to see if there was anything that would indicate why teams seem to scratch.
Initially I was looking for:
* What percentage of teams scratch
* What stage they tend to scratch at (early, late, mid-way through the race)
* Whether they have extensive experience of the race (or other races), or whether they are obviously novice crews
Looking at the data it’s difficult to draw conclusions (which in itself is actually quite good news) :-).
Of the 98 teams that started in 2008, a total of 19 teams scratched after leaving Whitehorse. This makes something like a 20% scratch rate. One team even scratched before leaving Whitehorse - I guess nerves or illness might be an issue in the immediate lead-up.
The key points that people tend to scratch are between Little Salmon and Fort Selkirk, with 17 scratches in that 24 hour period. Interestingly, most of the scratches seem to have happened during the day-time of the second day; presumably it is the effort of working through the night that causes a lull the next day.
Of the teams who did scratch, a total of 8 seem to have had previous experience in adventure races, but just 6 of those had extensive paddling experience (by my reading of their bios, however subjective that might be). 5 of these teams stated a time as part of their objective.
So we should:
Watch out of the second day; it seems like this is the time many teams crash and have to scratch their race.
Keep a wise head on, and avoid hubris; this is a very long and arduous race. It doesn’t seem to be the case that experience sees racers through; the mix of teams who scratched doesn’t indicate that they were those least likely to be fully prepared.
0