The sportsmen were wired before the last race round. Even those who lost their hope got the heebie-jeebies. Can you blame competition favourites? Their rivals breathed down their exhaust pipe. The Nevir-Shatsk route was crucial for them. It’s hit-or-miss!
The unwillingness to give the ground on the last trophy raid section forced the sportsmen to go deeper than ever. Impassible bogs were driven through. The route with check points went along the Byelorussian border. Any wrong turn and you are facing a frontier marker. Even if you did not encounter any markers, you can feel the stares of Byelorussian frontier guards on your cars watching the race through their binoculars.
Not everyone was able to feel relief and regret all at the same time (this usually happens on the last day of any exciting race). Many crews stood out of the path during the first rounds of the competition with their cars broken. Thus, only one crew competing in the motor tourism class reached the finish out of two. Yuriy Harbaruk and Taras Dundiy were slow but confident and they were able to see the black and white flag dropped. They were in no hurry – the first place was theirs. However, they stood a good fiasco chance. Inasmuch as there are fewer gas stations in the forest than the crews need, an empty tank could take away any hope of bicyclists for a victory. Still, colleagues competing in the tourism class were eager to share their stock.
Fuel shortage could play a dirty trick on other competitors as well. It is not easy to calculate the fuel stock when a car shows at least 20L/100km rate. Mutual support saved the day as always. A crew from Odessa just threw a gas tank through the window to those asking for help beneath our eyes. While the last were shouting Take your tank at Odesans, the well-doers tore the earth with their tires a half-kilometre away being overcome with the desire to reach the finish as soon as possible.
Local citizens were genuinely interested in the race. Some of them observed the race sitting on a bench outside and taking pictures by their phones, while others took markers, crayons and used wallpapers and draw posters to welcome the racers. It was stunning that people were carrying such posters even in the open field in the pouring rain.
Favourites were obvious in most classes. Everything turned out really dramatic in the tourism class. The crew made of Leonid and Iryna Protasova (number 731) driving Volkswagen Amarok (the one we used for our press-centre) were so close to a definite victory. A 40 minute head start allowed them to manoeuvre. Any sportsman passing yet another check point asked whether the 731st crew have already passed the point. No one could dream of such manoeuvre costing them a medal place.
- We entered all coordinates in the GPS-navigator using a PC. We passed 14 check points and the navigator failed at the 15th point, – say Iryna Protasova. – For us to reach the last point we entered the coordinates to the GPS-device manually. It appears that we somehow mixed the format and saw a frontier post on our way to the check point. There was Poland behind the post. We got it that something was not right but it was too late. We lost 2 hours of our time due to this failure.
A bivouac (camping) place was filling with arriving maintenance cars of the crews at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The first finishing racers were pulling up as well.
The competitors who were tired but happy pitched camps, showered, dined and hurried to a cocktail party to share their last impressions of any route difficulties arranged by the hosting party led by Serhiy Osadchyy. He was responsible for making the route from Kyiv to Shatsk and kept it a secret even from his closest assistants.
A show and a ceremony to award all trophy raid competitors with certificates of honour was scheduled for 9 p.m. Not all contestants have been able to finish until the event started. They were still making it after a rousing show by Vopli Viadoplassova and fireworks. The race ended for some racers on the eighth of July instead of seventh.
