Adventure Racing World Championships

The Adventure Racing World Series (ARWS) comprises a number of expedition-length adventure races that push the world’s best endurance athletes to their limits in a season of competition that tests their skills in a range of disciplines including navigation, trekking, mountain biking, paddling and climbing.

Mixed gender teams of four competitors compete in a series of up to a dozen races held in locations spread across the globe. These races culminate in the staging of the Adventure Racing World Championships, the winner of which is crowned World Champions.

The competition's format provides that each of the individual events of the World Series function as a qualifier for the World Championships. The top two finishing teams in each event secure the opportunity to compete in the World Championships. The field of event winners and second place getters is then supplemented by the reigning world champions, who are given the right to defend their title, and a selection of wild card entrants round out the number of starters.

The actual World Championship race rotates each year. One of the qualifying events is singled out and designated as the World Championship event and this event provides a dramatic conclusion to the end of the World Series racing season.

In addition to the World Championship race, points are assigned to results from each of the qualifying races in the series to determine a World Ranking. Points are allocated on a teams best two results in a calendar year over a two-year period (with heavier weighting given to World Championship results), with the ranking cycle periodically refreshed every 4–6 months.

The Adventure Racing World Championship was the brainchild of Geoff Hunt and Pascale Lorre, long-time adventure racers who sought to "lend badly needed structure to the sport". Hunt and Lorre's vision was first brought to fruition in Switzerland in 2001 where 41 teams contested the Discovery Channel World Championship with the controversy-plagued event eventually won by Finland's Team Nokia Adventure. A team from New Zealand, including Kathy Lynch, came second that year.

After a two-year hiatus the Adventure Racing World Championships was next held in Canada in 2004 and has subsequently been held every year since.

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