Our role models:
by Jacqueline Windh on EcoPrimalQuest
… For a relatively new team on the AR scene, New Zealand’s Orion Health have amassed quite a string of top-ten finishes in major international competitions. But, perhaps more significantly, they also have shown themselves to have a strong tendency for improvement year after year. In the Adventure Racing World Championships, they placed 5th in 2006 (Sweden) and then an even better 3rd in 2007 (Scotland). In the XPD Australia, an ARWS qualifier, they were 2nd in 2006 and then moved up to take first this year.
They are also unbeaten in 24 hour races in their home country for the last three years – registering an astonishing 13 straight wins!
… The team has been racing under the sponsorship of Orion Health, a medical software development company, for two years. Captain Wayne Oxenham, 35, raced his first adventure race with his brother in 2003, and won it, in spite of “never having seen a topo map in our lives” and not having a compass.
A year later he started racing with Stuart Lynch, 30, and they found themselves winning more races. They brought in Brent Edwards, 29, for his navigational experience and then, last year, Anna Berthelsen, 24.
read more – 2008 Team Profile: Orion Health
(via Adventure Blog)
