Martin Hatchuel
Adventure racing isn’t for sissies – not that I’d know this for sure (being a total sissy myself, the only time I ever come close to adventure is when I flick the remote over to SuperSport…); but even I could see that you needed a particular kind of bravery if you were going to take on the task called the ‘USN Feathered Aggression’ in South Africa’s regional selections for the world’s greatest adventure – the Land Rover G4 Challenge.

See, it was like this: starting (and ending) at the very top of an incredibly high and incredibly conical koppie, you had forty minutes to navigate a fairly open but unmarked track around a dam on a farm outside Prince Albert. Also you had to find four check points out there and punch your clip card (in orienteering they sometimes call it a diary) in a given order. And you had to carry a rally-style route book to help you find your way through the maze of game paths and gravel roads in that 300 hectare camp.

Trouble is – they farm ostriches in Prince Albert and the Selections were held in spring, when a male ostrich’s fancy turns to, well, things other than mountain bikers.

But Magnetic South (the people who organised and managed the Selections on Land Rover’s behalf) are a pretty resourceful bunch – so they did a little research and learned that the male of the species, like all males, I guess, feels threatened by anything that’s taller than he is.

The answer, then, was to give each rider an Ostrich Pacifier – kind of a flag made of black plastic rubbish bags and Land Rover G4 Challenge stickers at the end of two metres of plastic pipe (and as far as scaring those dumb males was concerned, the tattier the flag better).

And they worked.

So this is what you’ve got: a petrified rider standing shivering and alone at the top of a hell descent with a long piece of pipe in one hand, a route book and diary in the other and his bicycle in the third. Or however best he could organise it. (And you’ll notice that I’m using the masculine here rather than the feminine: that’s because Jeannie ‘The Bomb’ Bomford proved that a simple thing like holding all of that together was nothing for a girl. But Jeannie’s a story all of her own and I’ll get to her later).

It was quite a thing to see.

Of course being an onlooker gives you perfect hindsight – which is perfect indeed – and I couldn’t help wondering (but was forbidden from saying out loud) why no one thought to hang their route books clipped to the Really Useful Land Rover G4 Challenge Lanyard which came as part of everyone’s standard issue kit.

But this is what sets the Land Rover G4 Challenge apart from so many other sporting competitions – and, as far as I know, from all other car-company-sponsored events: it’s not all about athletic stamina or brute power; it’s not all about the car; and it’s certainly not all about being macho and tearing up the terrain (definitely not, in fact, because the first rule of Land Rover’s is to Tread Lightly).

No. It’s a combination of sporting ability, safe driving, intelligent navigation – and carefully thinking everything through to its logical (and winning) conclusion.

TASK MASTER
Chris Crewdson, the task master responsible for the USN Feathered Aggression, told me that he’d built a course 5.07 km in length (that’s without getting lost) and that, “in terms of riding, the downhill is a little bit technical for those who aren’t used to it – but the biggest technicality is actually the ostriches.

“They bring in the fear factor…”

He said that the route book was simple to follow, “but people make mistakes because they’re concentrating more on the ostriches…”

No doubt. Because this camp seemed to house more psychopaths and sociopaths per square kilometre than in all the plains of Africa.

It’s part of the 8,500 hectare Vrisgewacht farm, which belongs to Herman and Maryna Olivier and their sons, Jaco and Pieter. And Jaco, who farms with the birds, told me that adult male ostriches weigh between 120 and 145 kg (which, when it’s kicking you, equals the mass of an entire rugby scrum – with a few players from the back line thrown top. And Jaco should know – he’s been kicked by one. One ostrich, that is).

In total Jaco has a permanent – what d’you call it? herd? – of 76 females and 34 males which produce about 2,000 chicks a year, most of whom get sold off when they’re four months old. And – get this: in that tiny permanent group of 76 males, five seemed, to us at least, to be seriously in need of psychiatric help (which isn’t bad, I suppose, considering that most women think that ALL men are seriously in need of psychiatric help…).

Breastplate had a huge growth on his – you guessed it; Biltong had a spare piece of flesh hanging from the side of his neck (although it was difficult to decide which side, the ostrich’s neck being so long, thin, round and narrow); One-eye looked like a cross between a pirate captain and his parrot; Wagter – it means ‘Guard’ – was so named because he was always hanging around at the gate (he was also the one who killed a G4 jacket belonging to event director Mark Collins, who’d tried to use the thing as a Pacifier. Ostriches: they know about the right tool for the job). And then there was Bliksem – it means lightning, but it’s more commonly used as slang for ‘smack’ – who really did bliksem one of the competitors right off his bike (it’s true: I saw it happen).

But although a total of three people had gone ostrich-over-kettle by the end of Selections, it was impossible to find anyone – competitor, crew or spectator – who didn’t look back on the USN Feathered Aggression without grinning and saying “now THAT was fun!”.

It could only, as Land Rover South Africa’s Roland Reid put it, have happened in Africa – “and it proved that South Africans are as tough as biltong.

“Ostrich biltong.”

And talking of tough – about Jeannie Bomford: Roland showed me a helmet that’d been cracked in a fall.

“This is Jeannie’s,” he said, “and although she didn’t fall in front of an ostrich, she certainly did collect some roasties.

“But she still managed to get up, ride on and set a record (beating even the men) for this task… and she went on to set a record for the next one, too” (the next task – Flaky Cliffs – was an abseiling-running-and-compass-work challenge that everyone nicknamed ‘Headless Chicken’ because if you stood on the cliff and watched them running around looking for their checkpoints…).

And of course Jeannie went on to win a place in the squad for South Africa’s National Selections in the Land Rover G4 Challenge. But you have to wonder – if she makes it all the way through to the Land Rover G4 Challenge itself, will she ever again have to do anything as weird (or as wonderful) as dodging dilly ostriches?

While we were in Prince Albert, the Land Rover G4 Challenge crew stayed at Weltevrede Guest House (Suzelle and Pieter Koorts and Liezl and Jaco de Klerk – www.princealbert.org.za/weltevrede.htm),  while the competitors stayed on the Swartberg Nature Reserve (www.capenature.org.za).

More information at www.landroverg4challenge.com. A South African supporters group – “Land Rover G4 Selections South Africa” – has been created on Facebook.