Team USA Places Fifth in Camel Trophy Mongolia '97

2 June 1997
Team USA Places Fifth in Camel Trophy Mongolia '97

    KHARAKORUM, Mongolia, June 2 -- The eighteenth annual Camel
Trophy Adventure concluded here yesterday, with Americans Doug Mays and
Christopher vanNest taking fifth place in what has been described as one of
the most demanding adventure competitions on earth.  The winners were the
Austrian pair of Stefan Auer and Albrecht Thausing.
    For nearly three weeks, twenty teams from around the world drove identical
Land Rover Discoverys on a 1500-mile route through central Mongolia, a country
twice the size of Texas with fewer than 600 miles of paved roads.
    "The unique thing about the event is that it's not so much the final
standings that count, but the great feeling of accomplishment you get from
having done it," reflected Mays, 35, a forest engineer from Corvallis, Ore.
"In one, two or five years, I'm not going to remember that we placed fifth,
but I will remember the lifetime friendships and bonds that started here."
    New to this year's Camel Trophy was a series of four competitive
disciplines:  Driving, Kayaking, Mountain Biking and Orienteering.  Eight
times during the event, the teams stopped for a day's worth of athletic
competition.  Participants faced technical offroad driving challenges,
whitewater kayak courses, mountain bike races and map-and-compass orienteering
tests.
    Teams received points based on their performance in each competition, and
the scores were added up to determine the overall winner in each discipline.
These scores were then combined to determine the overall Camel Trophy winner.
The final results were announced at an awards ceremony at Erdenezuu Hiid -- a
16th century Mongolian Buddhist monastery.
    In addition to the overall Camel Trophy, the Austrians won the mountain
Biking and Driving awards; France took home the Kayaking trophy and Sweden
walked away with the Orienteering title.  In the first year that a co-ed team
has won an award, Swedes Rikard Beckman and Marie Hansen were also voted Team
Spirit winners by their fellow participants.  The Americans placed fourth in
Driving, eighth in Kayaking, fourth in Mountain Biking and eighth in
Orienteering.
    Adding to the challenge, teams were given GPS coordinates to the eight
Competition Sites and were required to find their own way to each location.
On three occasions, the twenty national teams competed for the Land Rover
Driving Award during this section of the event.  The goal in this competition
was to find a specific location in a pre-determined ideal distance, with
respect to terrain, environment, safety and the vehicle's capabilities.  Mays
and vanNest, both skilled drivers, placed third, behind Romania and the U.K.
in only the second year that this award has been presented.
    For the participants, Camel Trophy Mongolia '97  was an opportunity to
visit a vast and unusual land, experiencing the local culture along the way.
Rather than travelling convoy-style, as in previous events, the teams were
free to drive either on their own or in small groups.  The largely nomadic
population live in traditional gers and herd a variety of animals, including
sheep, goats, cows, horses, camels and yaks.  The hospitality that is a way of
life in the Mongolian countryside was extended to the Camel Trophy
participants throughout their travels.
    The diversity of Mongolia also extends to the extreme differences in
climate and terrain from region to region.  The wind-blown grassy steppes of
Terelj and Erdene-Bulgan gave way to the frozen waters of Lake Hovsgol and the
snowy surface for mountain biking and orienteering.  Dipping down into the
Gobi, renowned for its exceptional completed finds of dinosaur, fossils, the
teams shed their parkas and fleece jackets for shorts and t-shirts.
    "The event was great because we got to see such a contrast," said vanNest,
25, a multimedia software developer from Bethlehem, Penn.  "We went from snow
and ice to the dry arid desert."
    Competing in Camel Trophy Mongolia '97 were teams from Austria, the
Canary Islands, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy,
Japan, Morocco, Portugal, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, Turkey, the UK and the USA.
    Individuals interested in participating in Camel Trophy '98 should
contact: Tom Collins, U.S. Camel Trophy Coordinator, P.O. Box 587, Snowmass,
Colo., 81654.
    Camel Trophy is sponsored by Worldwide Brands, marketer of Camel Trophy
Adventure Wear, and by Land Rover, manufacturer of premium British four-wheel
drive vehicles.

SOURCE  Land Rover North America, Inc.