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Team Fairydown Fleet CookieTime
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Legendary John Howard and his crew of New Zealanders are the returning champions from Eco-Challenge 1999 Argentina. Will they do it again?
By David Thomsen, Quokka Sports |
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When team captain John Howard, perhaps the greatest adventure racer in history, shows up at the Eco-Challenge starting line, you can bet his greying hair will already be disheveled. His clothes will appear sloppy and out of place. His beard will be unkempt. But you can also bet that he will be ready to race -- and, that people will be expecting his team to cross the finish line first, several days later.
His unkempt appearance has almost become a cliché in the adventure racing community, to the point where other competitors claim he cultivates it on purpose. But Howard, 44, sees it differently.
"I wear clothes that are functional," said the part-time window washer. "If there's a hat that I'm finding too hot or something, then I'll just rip the top off to make it cooler. I'm not interested in looking good, I'm more worried about functioning well."
Howard looks rather like a mountain man because he is. After growing up in the mountains of New Zealand, he took to mountaineering, kayaking, skiing and rock climbing as a teenager. Despite his preference of non-competitive sports, he entered his first expedition-style race in his mid-twenties, coming in second place. "From the very start I knew I was going to be good at that sort of event," he said.
Though he spends a good portion of the year on the road racing in exotic locations, Howard prefers the simple life when at home in Christchurch, New Zealand. "I'm not into sophisticated living," said Howard, who is single. "I bake my own bread, I read a lot of books. I don't have television."
Howard, who has won both the Eco-Challenge and Raid Gauloises three times, is known as much for his offbeat personality as his utilitarian dress. "I like sort of making the odd comment here that might get people wondering what I meant," he said. "Playing mind games is part of the fun."
Balancing out Howard's quirkiness on Team Fairydown Fleet CookieTime are husband-and-wife uber duo Keith and Andrea Murray and 38-year-old kiwi fruit farmer Neil Jones. Keith, also 38, is a family doctor, while Andrea, 35, designs gardens. All three were members of Howard's winning squad last year at Eco-Challenge Argentina.
One of the keys to Team Fairydown's success is teamwork, democracy and mutual understanding, according to Howard. "I believe in trying to anticipate problems before they actually happen," he explained.
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Despite having won nearly every race he's entered, Howard concedes, albeit reluctantly, that he does have weaknesses. "I don't like the cold," he said. "And I'm not a good swimmer."
Cold temperatures are obviously not a factor in Borneo, which sits nearly on the equator. "We're going to really suffer from hot humid conditions," said Howard, who trains on an altitude simulation machine. "We're going to have to slow down sometimes just because of the heat rather than because of the physical fitness type things."
One of the keys to Team Fairydown's success is teamwork, democracy and mutual understanding, according to Howard. "I believe in trying to anticipate problems before they actually happen," he explained. "If there's navigation decisions to be made, an hour or two before we get to the place, we'll probably be discussing it. I like to get input from the whole team. If someone's being quiet, I'll try to get them to speak up."
Howard has raced in the jungle before, in the 1999 Elf Authentic Adventure in the Philippines, which, not surprisingly, he also won. "I had very very sore feet," he said humbly about the event. "We had a fungus that sort of ate holes in our feet. That was very very painful."
He expects this year's Eco-Challenge to present new problems. "There are so many new factors this year," he explained. "A lot of teams are going to find it really stressful because the teams are going to split into two groups. And there's sailing, which we've never done in an Eco-Challenge before."
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