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Team AussieSpirit.com
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Team Profile
By David Thomsen, Quokka Sports |
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At the heart of Team Aussiespirit.com, one of this year's Eco-Challenge favorites, is expedition racing veteran Jane Hall. A seven-time world champion in
paddle sports, Hall has been a fixture at the Eco-Challenge since its
inception in 1995, when Team Aussie took first place.
Hall, who has a doctorate in marine ecology, is revered and respected by other
competitors, who frequently cite her team as their toughest competition.
"Jane Hall is the best woman paddler in the world, bar none," exclaimed
four-time Eco-Challenger Jason Middleton of Team Earthlink. "People with
those kinds of resumes kind of scare me a little bit."
Indeed, Hall's resume includes a list of championships, awards and
accomplishments that three or four people might have trouble amassing. The
44-year-old has won more than 15 international titles in kayak racing, remaining
unbeaten in Australia for 10 years. She's won world championships in marathon
kayak, ocean kayak and outrigger canoe races. She's an environmental
scientist, a dedicated activist, a successful paddlesport coach and a
skillful motivational speaker.
But mention to Hall that Borneo will be her sixth Eco-Challenge, and you get
the sort of nonchalant answer that has become Hall's hallmark. "Gosh I guess
it is. Is it?" she wondered. "What are we up to -- '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2000.
Yeah it is. Bloody hell!"
Despite her experience, Hall is skeptical about Team AussieSpirit.com being the prerace favorite. "We never look at
ourselves as favorites because every year, the race organizers say there's a
stack of paddling in it," she said. "It's still always, always, very much a
trekking race, and I see this one as being no different."
Joining Hall in Borneo is longtime teammate John Jacoby, 29-year-old
designer Matt Dalziel, and 34-year-old engineer Nigel Aylott. Dalziel raced with Team Aussie in British Columbia in 1996.
Jacoby, like Hall, is a race fixture. The 35-year-old bank manager is also a world-class paddler, having won the marathon kayaking world championships four years in a row.
Team AussieSpirit.com is unique in that its members train separately. "We operate a
lot differently to many of the top teams that train together all the time and
race together all the time," said Hall. "We race together once a year and we
never train together."
Adding another interesting twist to team dynamics is newcomer Aylott,
who won the Southern Traverse in 1999 but is an Eco-Challenge rookie. "We've
got one new team member, Nigel, who I've never met, so I get to meet him in
Borneo," said Hall with a laugh.
Hall was a latecomer to paddling. "As a youngster I used to play a lot of
field hockey and basketball," she said. "And I kept getting a lot of
injuries, broke my ankles three times, but I'd just keep playing and
basically wreck them. I was basically looking for another sport that I
could get into that wasn't going to trash my lower body, because my lower
body was already trashed. And so kayaking came along as an opportunity."
It didn't take her long to find success. "I started actually training when I was 28 and I enjoyed it and it gave me something to focus on," she said. "And within 10 months I was fortunate enough to be representing Australia at the world championships."
When not racing, Hall works for the New South Wales state government as an
environmental scientist. "I work in land and water conservation so I look at
broader environmental issues concerning soil and water and vegetation," said
Hall, who is also an honorary director of CleanUp the World, an international
non-profit organization based in Sydney.
As the years progress, Hall is finding that her motivations for competing in
the Eco-Challenge are changing. "The attraction of actually doing the race
itself is perhaps balanced a little bit more by actually going to the
location and experiencing the environment," she said. "The physical is still
important obviously, and we still go in there to do as well as we can, but
for me personally, I'm finding that the playing field is no longer level in
Eco-Challenge."
Hall claims that well-funded teams have a decided advantage. "I think that
some of these teams are able to go there two months before or a month before
and basically learn what the course is," she said. "The race has shifted in
its philosophy, now that there are more professional-type teams coming in,
teams that get to race in a much more regular capacity than we're able to."
But Hall, a friendly and relaxed conversationalist, is not bitter. "It's a
function of what happens when money gets into sport and that's fine, I accept
that," she said. "They're given an opportunity to do that and that's fine, I
don't begrudge that they should take that opportunity."
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