Musing and Errata on the world of Adventure Racing from the Yak
presented by MPGear.com

So I'm sittin' around on Friday...ya know, just minding my own business...when I get this email from Rich Brazeau. He's the CEO of Primal Quest, LLC. We're buds. His missive is short and to the point. All it says is 'call me' with a number. I called him.

Rich was in Montana at the offices of Barrett Productions, the company tasked with filming Primal Quest and turning the raw footage into the epic we're all waiting to see.

He was hard at work with the staff of Barrett and his partners at ESPN, putting the final touches on the 6 hour Primal Quest broadcast that airs this week. Episodes 1-4 will be shown on ESPN2 Monday (YES, tonight) through Thursday. The finale will be shown on ABC this coming Saturday.

Rich wanted to give me his thoughts on how the final cut had turned out so that I could share it will all of you.

You'd expect the CEO to have good things to say. He did. You'd expect him to say that he was excited and confident. He is. What you might not expect is for him to go on record saying, "I loved watching Eco Challenge on TV. They did an amazing job. What we've done raises the bar." He said that too.

I asked Rich how this production differed from what we've seen of PQ in the past, and more importantly, why he felt it was better than what Mark Burnett did with Eco Challenge.

"ESPN is the difference. With their involvement, Primal Quest comes off more like a sport than a drama set against the backdrop of a sport. Don't get me wrong, it's dramatic, but I think it does adventure racing justice in a way the racers are going to appreciate. I think this broadcast has the potential to inform and excite the public about adventure racing to an even greater extent than Eco Challenge did."

I asked Rich if there was any particluar high point in the broadcast we should be looking out for. "All of Episode 4," he said. "Episode 4 is...well you're just going to have to watch it...don't miss Episode 4."

In order to tell the story of Primal Quest from the Start to the Finish with a degree of continuity, a number of teams were selected in advance to be filmed in detail. These teams had camera crews with them around the clock. As Rich puts it, fate smiled on this arrangement. "We got really lucky. Three of the teams we were following ended up at the front of the pack. That gave us a front row seat to the very dramatic and closely fought finish and a sweatheart story we wouldn't have captured otherwise."

I asked Rich if he had any regrets. "I wish we could have covered more teams. I wish we could have shined the spotlight on all the teams. There is simply no way to do it."

I chatted with Rich for maybe 40 minutes about the race, the sport and the upcoming broadcast. I can tell you that he is already thinking of next year in part because he is so sure of the reaction this broadcast is going to get. If it's received even half as well as he expects, I get the feeling it's going to breath new life into adventure racing at a time when it's future seems uncertain.

Tel l your friends to watch Primal Quest. Tell your enemies. Tell everyone you know. We live in a world where money talks and bull$hit walks. You don't need to be a TV executive to know that the future of Primal Quest is tied to the success or failure of it's presentation to the public at large. If it's a hit we'll see bigger and better things next year and and the sport will benefit.