Eco-Challenge suffers first casualty

The 2003 Eco-Challenge North Amercian Championship suffered its first casualty on Monday, as a Team Leatherman athlete was med-evaced out after suffering an eye injury.

Just after daybreak, team member Jack Crawford (shown) had his eye poked by a coniferous tree.

Crawford told race organizers that he was looking down at a map while moving through dense bush.

He looked up and saw the tree but wasn't able to avoid it.

His vision was obscured by mosquito nettng and the dim light, he told staff.

With help from Sault Ste. Marie Search and Rescue, Team Leatherman's location was quickly pinpointed and Crawford was removed by helicopter to Sault Area Hospital.

There, he was treated for an abraised cornea.

He was released from hospital later in the day and rested at Algoma's Water Tower Inn, where SooToday.com caught up with him Monday night to take the above photo.

Crawford's teammates were subsequently removed by float plane and taken to a checkpoint near Wawa where they withdrew from the race out of concern that Crawford's injuries might have been more serious than they were.

At the checkpoint, medical staff reported removing insects that had burrowed into the feet of the other Team Leatherman members.

Team members were very excited by an encounter with a large moose in the middle of a Sunday-night thunderstorm.

It was around 8 p.m. and the animal appeared to be highly agitated.

Both the athletes and the moose chose to discretely retreat from the confrontation.

They reported the moose to be roughly the same size as Sault Ste. Marie's famous Bruce the Moose, whom they encountered during a pre-race dinner at Dock's.

Team members reported a chance encounter with Team Salomon U.S., about four hours after the race start.

As SooToday.com reported yesterday, the Salomon American team took a different route from the other athletes, slipping around the back end of Algoma Central Railway's Agawa Canyon Tour Train and disappeared into the bush.

The Leatherman team were amused at the encounter in the bush, especially when advised later of the Salomon strategy to try to save time.

The Salomon U.S. team is known for moving rapidly during the early stages of a race, but Team Leatherman had only been walking and were therefore surprised that four hours into the race, the speedsters had gotten no farther than they.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was jointly prepared by SooToday news director David Helwig and Lora Bender, a communications aide with the Eco-Challenge organization.