Second helpings
By TMX Archives on 17th Jul 03
IN SOUTH east Iceland there's a smoking, semi-active volcano called Hekla. IN SOUTH east Iceland there's a smoking, semi-active volcano called Hekla. According to the country's mythology, this is a portal of hell - basically, it's where you go if you fancy a chat with your buddy Lucifer. One man who spends more than his fair share of time up here is Kjartan, organiser of the 2nd Transatlantic Challenge. He's easy to spot - he always wears a hat to hide his horns! "Don't blame me Englishman," he laughs when I confront him with my suspicions, "I just took your entry, I did not make you ride." All of which sounds fair enough - although it's not hard to win an argument with a man who's on the verge of puking into his helmet. Team dbr were back in Iceland for TA2 after the intervening 12 months between our first visit and most recent stop-off on this large lump of lava in the north Atlantic had, thankfully, erased the painful memories. My, how quickly they all came flooding back... It was a new-look squad for '03. Long-term tester Rob Bayman, a veteran of our original visit, was unavailable for selection thanks to a new job so we drafted in GP wrench-cum-comedy Irishman Geoff Walker to join myself and Thor Kristinsson on Team Tosser. And fitting handily into our carry-on luggage, we also smuggled test rider Tony Marshall along for the ride. To be fair, Tony was on a more serious mission than the rest of us after hooking up with Ragnar Ingi Stefansson for a full-on tilt at the competition. Raggi's a multi-time Icelandic MX champ and - on paper at least - the pair looked a serious threat... But then those bloody Icelanders started bringing in the ringers. The cheek of them! Last year's winner Einar Sigurdarson teamed up with Swedish Dakar hero Per Gunnar Lundmark while enduro ace Viggo Viggoson had the nerve to join forces with another Brit - some second-rate, over-the-hill rider calling himself James Marsh! Marsh - now living in Belgium, working in Holland and racing in France - got an invite to race thanks to a tie-in between his girlfriend's family's business and Icelandic TM importer Jon Magnusson. "To be honest Iceland is exactly how I expected it to be," explained James. "I'd never been before but everyone told me it's like being on the moon - and they were right. I've also had trouble getting my head down because of the light nights but nothing I can't handle." But back to the race and after drawing the shortest straw it was decided I would take the first lap before handing over to Thor. So fully fuelled on strong coffee and Innergize! (get the mix right and you can twitch away all day) I took my place on the grid, seven rows and 70 riders back with another three rows and 30 riders breathing down my neck. Now, this was never going to be one of your civilised Fast Eddy-style starts where riders set off in small groups - it was more of a Saving Private Ryan assault on the first bend. When the flag dropped all hell was let loose with 100 riders kicking their steeds into life before nailing it into the opening turn. Luckily, the Arctic Trucks WR250F we were mounted on had a leccy start so there was no fannying around with a kickstart - nor, come to think of it, was there any fannying around with course marking. When the flagged dropped I shifted straight into cheat mode and selected an inside line, scattering spectators as I picked off about three rows of riders in one inspired moment of corner cutting. Result! Unfortunately, from here on in it was always going to go tits-up. Within minutes I was eating roost as one after another, three rows of riders came past. Then I only just survived a big endo moments before we left firm land behind and headed into the vast stretches of strength-sapping dark volcanic sand. Less than 10 minutes into my opening lap and I was knackered! The rest of the lap has now faded to a bit of a blur to be honest... The Innergize! was probably the only thing that kept me going as I dragged my sorry arse across the line in 68th place. It was just about then that Kjartan came across with an evil grin on his face... From here on in Team dbr's fortunes varied vastly depending mainly on whether it was me or someone else riding. Thor took us up to 56th, Geoff pushed us as high as 37th then I charged downfield to 46th. But we had one cunning plan left - don't let Lawless do another lap... So at just over half-distance and with three laps to my name I did the decent thing, assumed the 'weak' position and let Geoff and Thor bring the team home... Tony and Raggi were, meanwhile, fighting for the lead - but Tony was hurting. After starting from the fifth row, Tony popped his knee out just four corners into the race and couldn't pop it back in for nearly 10 minutes until he crashed. After that it kept going in and out all day. After the opening lap they were in second and then moved into the lead for four laps. But, with Tony due to put in two laps in a row, he picked up a puncture and lost enough time to dump them back to third, a position they never recovered from. So at the end of the six hours, victory went to James and Viggo on 16 laps with Tony and Raggi taking third, less than two minutes off the winning pace. Team dbr took 44th out of the 97 teams with our total of 12 laps. Marshy set the best lap of the day with a time of 21:24.87, Tony's best effort was a 22:10.90 and Geoff led Team Tosser home on 25:33.58. Thor's top lap was 29:51.78 while I'm afraid my woeful best was a 32:50.01...better than last year over a longer lap but still ***s-poor! After the number of entries virtually doubled for this year's race, Kjartan is considering capping the number of riders for '04. Saying that, he's mad-keen to get even more British riders across so, if you're interested in beating yourself up for six hours next year, stay tuned to www.enduro.is