Press and Media Center

Manzan, Smith win XTERRA Amazon

(Manaus, Brazil) - "Kahuna Dave” Nicholas, the managing director of the XTERRA World Tour, was at the inaugural XTERRA Amazon on Saturday, and when he finally got an internet connection - filed this report:

For once I am at a loss for words.  This past weekend the first XTERRA Amazon was organized and operated.  Every kid studies the Amazon river, we all wonder what life is like at the equator.  Well, you can experience that whole scene next year if you make plans to get to Manaus, Brazil for XTERRA.

The entire event is like a fantasy camp.  Staff, officials, athletes, and families stay in the Capitol city of Manaus.  The race is held at a Brazilian Army base that is called CIGS; the Center for Instruction in Jungle Warfare.  Bikes and packet pickup are held at the Manaus headquarters of CIGS.  You give your bikes to the army and they are loaded carefully on trucks and taken out to the race site.  Nobody sees the course, swim, transition - nothing until the day of the race.

The caravan of buses leaves the center of Manaus at Ponte Negro at 4am.  It is about an hours drive to the port of Amazon where the army awaits you with about six spider boats (holds 10 people and goes about 40mph and is used to chase down drug smugglers) a huge barge and a flatbed boat.  This armada carries roughly 300 people another hour on the Amazon.  About 30 minutes into the boat ride dawn breaks over the Amazon jungle and it is a sight to be seen.  The water is dark but clear (figure that one out) clouds are huge and soft and puffy, the trees and jungle are endless.  You look out at this and think to yourself - did I ever think I would be on a boat going down the Amazon river to the heart of the rainforest and jungle?

The boats tie up at Camp IV and as you round a corner on the river you see huge XTERRA buoys.  The boats dock, a big Welcome XTERRA arch awaits you along with sweet coffee, fruit and bread for breakfast.  It is still only 6am and already you have experienced a weeks worth.

Oh yeah, there was a race.  Brandon Rakita was the first individual out of the water with a big lead of over a minute Alex Manzon and Ezequiel Morales, but behind 14-year-old Juliana Cruz a member of the winning relay team.  This little gal is an amazing swimmer.

The bike course consisted of a long dirt road that resembled a full roller coaster - very steep climbs and descents with cut offs into the jungle that would loop back onto the road.  To spice things up, about an hour before race start it rained.  After all it is the rain forest.  This downpour did not last long but made the course slippery and inside the jungle a morass of mud.  Branden was beginning to feel the fatigue of a long long trip and the heat and humidity early on.  Alexandre Manzan, many time Champion of Brazil, passed Rakita just before the first cut-off into the jungle.

Jen Smith had a good swim and came out of the water well positioned only to find a soft, almost totally flat rear tire.  Jenny is not the type to panic and had remembered seeing a pump close by - she took the bike to the pump, filled the tire and took off hoping the inflation would hold.  It did.  She caught all the other women by the end of the first jungle loop and never looked back.  "I wasn't sure how far ahead I was or even if I was ahead.  Because there are no spectators and even with all the Army support, there was nobody to tell me where I was" she said.  "The heat on the run and the hills really got to me and at the first aid station I simply had to stop and drank an entire Gatorade bottle!"  That must have worked as she came in 7 minutes ahead of second place Carla Prada and 10th overall.

Rakita's body kept going but he sacrificed his fabulous swim to four others and came across the line in 5th and in need of hydration and some rest.  He did recover enough to make the killer disco party (get rested because it does not start until 11pm).

Out on the course, as the leaders went by, the mud got thicker to the point when riders came back to the main road after the last jungle loop, everyone stopped and took handfuls of brown mud out of brakes and frames before heading out.  The CIGS Army corps did a phenomenal job with soldiers and medical everywhere - lots of water and gatorade and energy gells.  Because it is the start of winter and you are 250 miles below the equator night comes early (6pm), so a cutoff time was enforced so bikes and people could be loaded back on the barges and boats and back to port before nightfall.

That evening at 7 Ponte Negro (think any oceanside boardwalk scene) was closed down for a nighttime 5K/10K run race.  Thousands of spectators, food vendors, vendors selling everything imaginable from wood tucans to real blow guns and darts - cold Brahma and Skol beer - fish on skewers.

A fabulous race, wonderful organization by Bernardo Fonseca's X3m group, unbelievable logistical work by the Brazil Army and the city of Manaus.  Truly a once-in-a lifetime experience that must be seriously considered by anyone who ever wondered what that part of the world is like.  The race is on Sunday, there are loads of tours to take you up the Amazon where the Rio Negro collides and the Meeting of the Waters (one river is brown the other black) happens.  Swimming with pink fresh water dolphins, wildlife galore and food that is diverse and tasty.  Put this one on the list.

By the way - the mascot of the Brazilian Jungle Army is the Panther.  They run wild in this part of the world and one beauty actually came close to the course to see what was happening.  Yes - we call them leopards - one full grown adult is not an XTERRA fan.