Winners of AR world championship two years ago also in Velenje, Slovenia

We've made a short interview with one of the favourits in AR Slovenia, French team Les Arcs Quechua.


Team leader Bilodeau Yves

Can you tell us more about your team?!
We come from France. Les Arcs is an alpine skiing station. Pretty big one in France and Quechua produces the equipment for climbing and outdoors so we're  really proud to have good a sponsor like that which helps to go to adventure races like that.

How did you find out about our race?
On the internet and from lots of people. There is a French team that was racing here two years ago. We know the guy really well and he told us that it was a pretty nice race and nice scenery. He told us it was worth coming so we decided to organize the trip to Slovenia. And it would be a really good preparation for another big race we have in France next week.

How long are you involved in AR?
We've been racing for many years now and we have lots of experience. Myslelf I have been racing from the begining of adventure racing.

What is your best result? Which race was the hardest, the most beautifull?
For sure the biggest challenge was the Salomon adventure racing circuit. We won most of the qualification races one year and we also became the world champions two years ago. Last year in Quebec we finished on sixth place. These were the races where most of the worlds' top teams were competing. We're always able to compete with the best teams so it's always a great challenge for us.


Day before the race in used for preparation of the equipment

Are you better on short or longer race? What do you preffer?
I think we're pretty good in both but we do mostly shorter two to three day races. The long races you never know what's going to happen. You have to go and see what happens.

Are you familiar with other teams here? What are your expectations for this race?
That's a good question, because we have no idea about other teams. We've look around at the meeting, we tried to find out which of the teams would be a good challenge for us, which team could lead us. We have no idea what's going to happen. We just hope there is going to be good competition tomorrow so we can challenge to other teams and enjoy the weekend.

What's you main advantage before other team?
We're good in everything except swimming. Two members are good swimmers, other two are average swimmers. 

How do you like the organization so far?
So far very friendly. So far every question has been asked very quickly and I hope the weather will keep like that, we will have a super weekend.

I suppose you were talking about french team EAFIT before so I would like to ask you if you think the hot weather could give you problems as the Eafit team experienced it two years ago.
We already feel it. We're just packing for the race and it's already really hot. It's something we're going to be carefull about.

Do you have regular jobs back home?
We all have jobs. Is' a hobby. We do that in the summer to have fun. We have a good sponsor that covers all our expences to go to races like this.

text: Ravc
photo: SO4