Primal Quest
reporting presented by Inov-8

Don Mann, former U.S. Navy SEAL and the CEO of Primal Quest, is an adventure racing entrepreneur with an unusually rich history. During his decades as an "operator" on the Teams, Mann did countless things he can't tell anyone. But here's a little something he told me. Adventure racing has a new prince. And it's a prince with a capital P.

Back when Mann was on duty at SEAL Team 2, prepping to lead fellow sailors through a Raid Gauloises expedition adventure race, he was approached by a member of SEAL Team 8, one Erik Prince, about what essentially amounted to a sponsorship for Mann's adventure racing team. Prince liked the concept, Mann said, of a SEAL Team competing on a global stage. And, lucky for Mann and his AR teammates, Prince had just come in to some money. "He wrote me a check on the spot," Mann recalled. The men have been friends ever since.

Mann went on to found Don Mann Enterprises, a military training and motivational speaking business based in Virginia. He also launched Odyssey Adventure Racing, which he later sold to a friend. Today, Mann finds himself creating again. Under the name Don Mann Productions, he's fighting to keep expedition-length Primal Quest adventure race alive. To that end, he's slashed the budget of what once was a multi-million dollar event, and has introduced the Primal Quest Sprint Series of adventure races, designed to expand the PQ brand by making entry to the sport easier for all comers, at venues all across North America.

After the Navy, Erik Prince, that friendly SEAL who shared a bit of his inheritance to help Mann and his team with the Raid Gaulois, used even more of his fortune to buy several thousand acres of land near Moyock, North Carolina. He'd been frustrated by the tiny training facilities he'd used as a SEAL, and decided to create the kind of super-sized training ground local and regional law enforcement truly needed for shooting and security exercises. That goal soon accomplished, Prince's famously patriotic vision expanded to find ways to serve the United States government. Thanks to a series of right-place, right-time decisions by Prince after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, his company has evolved into Blackwater Worldwide, whose security guards you see in TV clips of U.S. diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan. But isn't this supposed to a story about adventure racing? Yes, it is, and I'm getting to that.

This morning, I got a press release via e-mail from Don Mann about his newest AR venture. At the request of Erik Prince, Don Mann Productions, in conjunction with Blackwater Extreme Racing, is planning a new event called the Blackwater Escape and Evasion Adventure Race. Teams of two are invited to compete in the 24-hour race, set for November 7 and 8, 2008, on Prince's private 7,000-acre North Carolina property.

Turns out, Prince is becoming something of an adventure racer himself. Mann said Prince has competed in at least one race, and intends to compete again. A similar thing happened once to a Silicon Valley executive. He had the resources to produce a world-class adventure race in North America, and did exactly that. But the seven-figure cash sponsorships needed to help the race break even were tough to find, and TV deals, which is what the big sponsors really wanted, proved even tougher. Eventually, the Silicon Valley executive tired of bleeding cash, and exited the world of adventure racing with just as much quiet grace as he entered. So what to make of Erik Prince's foray into adventure race production? I can not wait to find out. He just may be the Prince that North American adventure racing has been waiting for.