By Foibe N Paavo
SWAKOPMUND, May 7 – Reinhold Hugo of Switzerland and Victoria Connelly of the United Kingdom have taken the honours in the Namib Race 2022 which ended in Swakopmund on Saturday.
After five successful stages, and encountering harsh terrain, soaring heat and fierce winds, the testing event ended with stage 6 along the Skeleton Coast outside the coastal town in the Erongo region.
The final stage began at 09h00 but some of the starts were staggered to allow for racers to finish around the same time. The estimated finish time was around 10h00.
By 12h00 all racers had completed the stage with members of the Himba tribe, family, friends, volunteers and staff cheering them on to the finish line. There was hardly a dry eye among the crowd and competitors were overwhelmed with emotion after one of the hottest races on record.
There were no changes in the lead with Hugo and Connelly becoming Desert Race 2022 champions. Second and third-place finishers were, Terumichi Morishita (Mori Mori) of Japan, David Dano (Israel), Anim Swart of the United States / Canada, Carole Kops of Luxembourg, and all the racers who participated. The last racer to cross the finish line was Nodal Joo of Korea.
The winners of stage 5, Julita Ilczyszyn of Poland and Arthur Azevedo of Brasil, successfully crossed the finish line with nine minutes to spare before the cut-off time. Julita said: “Without Arthur, I could not have done it.”
The Ultramarathon Series continues on to Georgia, across the Southern Caucasus Mountain Range, in June 2022.
Namib Race 2022 concluded with stage 6 being the last one on the Racing Planet Programme. – Namibia Daily News
