New Zealand's Orion Health win XPD 2007

Orion Health made it to the finish line this afternoon, beating out Mexican Stingers Carboshotz to win by 42 minutes after about five and a half days of racing.

Orion absolutely carved it up on the final mountain bike, arriving well ahead of time estimates for the leg and holding off the Stingers, who were led by champion mountain biker Josh Street.

Brent Edwards from Orion said the team were very surprised to find themselves ahead of Mexican Stingers when they emerged at the final transition into the 60km bike to the finish line.

“We were sure we could see footprints on the last trail ahead of us,” he said. “Obviously we were imagining things.”

“The Stingers ran a great race,” he said. “We couldn’t believe how fast they were going. We kept thinking: `We’ll get them on this leg, we’ll get them on this leg, but they kept getting further and further away.”

“We had two sleeps and they had none, and they were still going faster than we were. We really didn’t think it was our race."

The lead changed hands on the final 80km trek. Navigation and morale problems for the Stingers caused them to lose the nine-hour lead they had put into Orion and emerge from the wilderness about 50 minutes behind.

“We couldn’t believe it when we made it to the transition area and found that we were in front," said Brent. "We were nine hours behind at one stage."

“At first we were excited to be in front but then we started to worry that they were ok, because some of them are our mates. We were glad to hear that they were fine.”

As the winning team of this year's XPD, Orion was given free entry into the Bull of Africa adventure race. Brent said he would love to compete in it.

Credit: xpd.com.au