20 Years of Adventure Racing in Coromandel
By Andy Reid
Are you trying to Kill us?
By Andy Reid
The proceeds are all going to help us maintain our Coromandel bike park
Book intro ...
New Zealand gave the world adventure racing; its spiritual home the beautiful Coromandel peninsula, where a friendship between a Kiwi butcher and an English accountant gave rise to Adventure Racing Coromandel, the longest-running event of its kind.
Once a year hundreds of men and women ran, kayaked and biked on tracks, trails and tributaries Keith and Andy unearthed, cleared and created in their own weekend adventures all over the Coromandel.
Their races became legendary for myths and legends, for semi-dangerous challenges like jumping off waterfalls or crawling through mineshafts and for practical jokes like checkpoints guarded by sharks or (real) eels and guerrillas suddenly appearing from nowhere.
More events followed; the K2 bike race - New Zealand’s toughest and most prestigious cycle road race and the Kauri Run, a tough ultra with shorter options and a community event. For every runner, a kauri was planted. All money raised from the events was used in the community to promote outdoor adventures and the events themselves brought huge economic benefit to the region.
This is the story of Adventure Racing Coromandel and the hundreds of volunteers and thousands of participants (among them Richie McCaw, Jack Osborne, model Jodie Kidd) who came each year to immerse themselves in the fierce beauty of the Coromandel.
It’s also about their legacy; of inspiring generations, planting some 20,000 kauri trees and creating Coromandel Township’s very own mountain bike park.
