Stanford hosts SA Champs

Stanford Lake College hosted the SA Champs Schools Adventure Racing on  October 11.

A total of 32 school teams from all over South Africa – as far as Kidd’s Beach and Lilyfontein in East London, arrived to compete. The event was split up into 3 categories: U/13; U/15 and U/19.

The U/13s raced a total of 30km, U/15s covered 60km and the U/19s course was over 80km. The races comprised of mountain biking, hiking, obstacle crossings, navigation, foot orienteering, kaskar, raft building, bum slide, swim and a water jump.

The race for the U/15s and U/19s started at 04:00 on Saturday morning, after the race briefing which was held on Friday.

In typical form, the mountain weather for the event was misty and windy which made the visibility very difficult.

Due to these conditions, the race was a lot slower than planned with some of the last teams finishing during Prize Giving at 17:00! The U/15 team of Stanford Lake College – team Tsanduko – did very well and finished in second place overall behind the winners, a team from Helpmekaar School, after leading the event for a while! Unfortunately, the senior team – team Ubuntu – had a disappointing race as they encountered a lot of unlucky mechanical problems – but that is part of adventure racing! Despite this, they showed real fortitude to fight on and still completed the race.

Thank you to all the parents who were seconding and supporting the teams. Despite the foul weather the event was a huge success!