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

From the RAID website:

After playing a key role in organizing 12 Raid Gauloises and 3 Raid World Championships, Saga Events decides to redevelop The Raid into a new international event and has set itself a brand new challenge for 2007: the creation of the first Saab Salomon MOUNTAIN SPORTS GAMES, a new concept in team based outdoor racing rooted in the most outstanding alpine sports.

A contest over 5 consecutive days, involving 5 different sports and open to the current top 80 male, female or mixed teams.

Saab Salomon Mountain Sports Games PDF.

Maybe the Mountain Sports Games will be a fantastic event. Whatever...it's not an adventure race.

There's gotta be a lesson to be learned from this choice by Saga to transition to a format that is more "mainstream", particularly when viewed in the context of Mark Burnett shelving Eco for Survivor, the death of the Balance Bar series and the uncertain future of Primal Quest.

For my part I think there are a few lessons from the above:

1. Eco Challenge was a mass market hit because of the human drama it showcased, not because it was an adventure race. The less than stellar reaction to the recent airing of the 2006 Primal Quest supports this idea, given that it treated the sport more like an actual race than just a backdrop to lots of crying and vignettes about adversity overcome.
   
   
2. Corporate sponsors with deep pockets don't write checks out of the kindness of their heart or because they love adventure racing. They may be generous and die hard AR fans, but the bottom line is that money talks and bullshit walks. Without a measurable ROI any marketing/branding/pr campaign is a non-starter. Were Saab and Salomon reaping a fat bounty (using whatever metrics they're looking at) would we be seeing this change from the RAID to the Mountain Sports Games?
   
   
3. Without a "drama lens" a la Eco Challenge, it is unlikely that adventure racing will ever reach a comparable level of interest amongst the unwashed masses. Look around you. All you see is tabloid drama and reality TV. You're not going to break through all those blank stares without something more than a long, hard race. Maybe that's ok :-)