For the week of August 13 - 19, 2003

Tobin’s team wins
X-adventure race

$50,000 Raid Series event Aug. 8-10

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Community School graduate and 13-year pro Michael Tobin, 39, of Boise led a four-member team that won last weekend’s 163-mile Solomon/Saab X-adventure Raid Series event from Stanley to Sun Valley.

Tobin, Mike Kloser, Ian Adamson and Danelle Ballengee are no strangers to adventure racing and they led the Team Nike/ACG Balance Bar squad to first place out of 21 competing teams and a $15,000 first-place prize.

Tobin’s Team Nike was essentially the same team that, as Salomon/Eco-Internet, captured the 2001 Eco-Challenge race in New Zealand. Tobin, the winningest Xterra and Powerman athlete ever, is a six-time Wild Rockies mountain bike king.

Team Nike’s time was 23 hours, 47 minutes and 21 seconds on a 10-section course that featured about 85 miles of mountain biking, 48 miles of orienteering and trekking, 17 miles of canoeing and 13 miles of in-line skating.

The winners led by over an hour after the first day and finished ahead of two French teams and one from Great Britain.

In eighth place in the $50,000 adventure race was the Bigwood/Montrail squad of Dave Harrison, Dave Bingham, Brooke Baughman and Novak Thompson from Australia in 33.07:20.

Thompson was on Team Montrail’s winning squad in a 828-kilometer race in Kyrgyzstan ending June 16. But he encountered stomach problems in last weekend’s race which hampered his effort.

The Idaho adventure race was part of the new Adventure World Cup consisting of qualifying events held in Scotland in May, France in July, Idaho in August, Spain in September and New Caledonia in October.

The top-ranked teams on this year’s X-adventure Race Series will be invited to compete in the 2004 Raid Series World Championships in Peru.

Team entry fee was $800. For more details visit www.raidseries.com.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.