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Team Salomon/Eco-Internet
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Salomon/Eco-Internet adds Wilson and Kloser, and again, will be a force to be reckoned with.
By David Thomsen, Quokka Sports |
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Team Salomon/Eco-Internet's Web site proclaims that they are "the world's most feared adventure racing squad." A bold statement, but if any Eco-Challenge team has earned the right to be a little cocky, it's Salomon/Eco-Internet.
In various incarnations over the past five years, the revered team has won every major event on the burgeoning adventure racing circuit, including the Eco-Challenge, the Raid Gauloises and the Southern Traverse.
But Salomon/Eco-Internet sports yet another team lineup in Borneo. After winning the Eco-Challenge under the Eco-Internet moniker last year, occasional team member and adventure racing MVP John Howard is competing this year with the favorite from New Zealand, Team Fairydown Fleet Cookie Time. Also gone is long-time teammate Robert Nagle, who is home with his wife and their newborn child.
Racing in Nagle's place is Michael Kloser, member of the 1998 Eco-Challenge Morocco winning Team Vail. "We stole him," said Salomon/Eco-Internet's captain and co-founder, Ian Adamson, one of the foremost adventure racers in the world. "Mike's been looking around for a stronger team and there are not a whole lot of teams stronger than Vail."
Kloser, 40, is a seven-time mountain bike world cup winner. "He's a really powerful athlete and he's a super super nice guy, highly motivated," said Adamson. "He's got that kind of mental attitude that makes him a perennial winner, not just a one-time winner."
Joining Adamson and Kloser are the experienced and respected duo of Robyn Benincasa, a 33 year-old firefighter, and 29 year-old Isaac Wilson, a ski instructor from Moab, Utah. Last year, racing with Adamson and two other women on Team Rubicon, the tough-as-nails four-time Eco-Challenger, Benincasa took fourth place. Wilson, who was once an Eco-Challenge course designer, has had strong finishes in major races on teams including Tactel-Inspira Stray Dogs.
"In adventure racing you have to be a team player, you have to be really really good at communication and understanding people, especially yourself."
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Despite the shuffled lineup, Adamson has no trouble articulating what sort of attitude makes his team so tough. "In adventure racing you have to be a team player, you have to be really really good at communication and understanding people, especially yourself," he said. "You need to get on well with people under incredibly high-stress situations. We get in those situations daily; it's life-threatening daily."
But being one of the top teams adds another layer of stress, according to Adamson, who once said that the toughest thing about doing an Eco-Challenge was answering reporters' questions out on the course. "For teams that aren't used to it, it's an incredible amount of pressure," he explained. "It certainly affects the race fairly heavily. But getting around all that stuff is what the whole race is about. It's about managing all the stress involved, and that's just an added stress that you can do without."
Adamson, the world record holder for the 24-hour kayak distance (217 miles), claims that the media pressure has subsided somewhat. "We're old news because we're kind of consistent and boring," he said.
Boring or not, Adamson is certainly consistent. Incredibly consistent. Since his first Eco-Challenge in 1995, he has not finished out of the top five. In fact, the 35-year-old motivational speaker and corporate trainer has not finished below fourth place in any major expedition race he's entered.
Born in Sydney, Australia, Adamson, who is of Eurasian descent, was adopted into an active family of academics. Growing up in Australia, he competed in "basically anything that involved moving under my own steam." He has hiked, biked and climbed on every continent and sailed on every ocean, finding time to earn a bachelor's degree in engineering and a masters in sports medicine along the way. He moved to the U.S. in 1991 and currently resides in Boulder, Colorado.
"We have a general rule of thumb, and that's that we want to stay safe, stay friends, have fun and have the best race we can," Adamson said. "And if you meet all those four criteria, chances are you do pretty well. But if you go out there to win it, it doesn't usually happen."
Warm, happy, safe friendships on the most feared team in the world? Could be, but you can bet Salomon/Eco-Internet is gunning for the win this year. "Underlying everything that we do, we're really damn competitive people," Adamson said.
Salomon/Eco-Internet will probably start off slowly. "I've always been way down in the pack somewhere on the first day or two, but that's by design because most teams go too fast at the start," said Adamson, an adamant proponent of strict sleep management.
"It's a little bit unnerving for us to be too high too soon," he said. "We prefer to sleep early and save a bit of energy and then kind of creep through the field and then blast off at the end.
"Our strategy when we get to the front is to start sleeping more. Because we figure, if we just sleep and get as much sleep as we can, if anyone catches us, it's unlikely they've been sleeping to catch us."
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