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This issue's ICE COOL THINKING with Skins sees Stuart Hale, team manager at Team Accelerate Adventure Racing making a judgement call as part of a support team during a big adventure race - a decision which was make or break on the day...
The Dilemma:
"We were going out for the third time as a team, to race over five days non-stop.
The four strong team had been out for two nights and unknown to myself and my fellow support crew member Debbie, they'd been held up on a climbing situation for about an hour, which then put them way back on achieving their target time for the next kayak stage. The importance here on the time was the turn of the tide, and apparently it was going to be a very strong one.
Then a decision was made by the marshals that due to the strength of the tide, teams would not be able to continue past a set time. If the team missed this cut-off, sure, they would get a welcome night's sleep, but all the points from that day would be lost, so we would drop out of the top ten and have a heck of a battle to get back."
The Decision:
"We had to decide whether to get the team into the kayaks and risk dropping up to eight points on that stage, or whether to give them a much-needed night's rest and write off the entire day's points.
"We decided to go for it, and the team only had ten minutes to transition and get the boats in the water, or they'd be taken out of the stage. They would drop something like eight checkpoints but stay on time."
The Conclusion:
"Fortunately, this ice cool thinking paid off with the team completing the kayak course and getting themselves back on time through the next bike stage. A lot came down to that decision and it helped us to eighth place overall and got us into the World Championships the next year, into the final!"
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