2002 Semifinals
Urban Challenge National Championships
The Sprint to the Finish
(See the results.)
"Who would have thought that a race like that would come
down to that kind of finish?" —Team Fluffy Bunny
The top seven teams (the Magnificent Seven) qualified to race the
finals. It was a two-team sprint to the finish, as Jeff and Jake
(LA winners, #10037, John (Jake)
Kelley Courtney & Jeff Atkinson) and Cotes du Rhone (Washington
DC 2nd place, #10109, Guy Johnson
and Chris Mackie) battled down Fremont Street to claim first. The
two shared the bus ride back to downtown together, and Cotes du
Rhone casually mentioned they had two checkpoints to go. Jeff &
Jake said they only had one checkpoint to finish. After getting
off the bus, it was only as Cotes du Rhone snapped their picture
at Mermaid's and sprinted away did Jeff & Jake realize they'd
been duped. The race was on, and Jeff & Jake came in just seconds
before Cotes du Rhone. Winning time was 2 hours, 34 minutes.
Twenty minutes later, third place went to Team Fluffy Bunny (LA
hometown, San Diego 3rd place, #10084,
David Olds & Damian Garcia).
Two sets of brothers filled out the remaining sub-3-hour slots.
Tweedle Dumb & Tweedle Dumber, better known as Team Google amongst
racers (San Francisco winners, #10091,
Charlie V & Justin Graham) arrived at 2:57:55. Hot on their
heels were The Blues Brothers (Seattle winners, #10097,
Michael & Brian Blue) who crossed the line just five seconds
later.
The remaining Magnificent Seven slots went to married couples.
Team Vignette #1 (Dallas winners, #10025,
Marcy & John Beard) and Oozing Monkeys (Minneapolis/St. Paul
winners, #10103, Catherine &
Terrence Lee came in at 3:04:00 and 3:05:00 respectively.
The Lees narrowly beat Pumpkin & Stiltskin (LA #5, #10039
John Ducey & J.P. Manoux) and #10021
(Cleveland winners, Dave S Landreth & Jeff Faunce) for the Magnificent
Seven slot. Here's some quips from the Yahoo!
Group:
David Olds (Team Fluffy Bunny):
Marcy and John--
Congrats on a great race. I think that it is so cool that
you guys won, after your crazy sprint finish to make it into the
finals in the first place.
Our ground support guy in the semis was on the bus
back to Freemont with all of you teams who ended up so close together.
He came racing over to Jillian's and asked us how many teams had
finished. We told him that there were two spaces left in the finals.
Just then another team crossed the line. One space left. He said
to us that he had just gotten off of the bus with four or five
teams, so we knew that it was going to be close. We ran up the
block to watch for you guys to come in, knowing that it would
probably come down to a few feet between making it or not. We
were screaming, "one place left." Watching you guys drag each
other across the line in 7th was great.
Terrence Lee (Team Oozing Monkeys):
David-
That was US (Oozing Monkeys) in the mad dash for the
7th spot! Marcy and John grabbed the 6th spot and did us a huge
favor by tiring out the team that finished in 8th...thanks again
for that by the way! And thanks to FBTC for letting us know that
there was only one spot left. We were quite content to run in
with the other two teams because we honestly assumed we were mid-pack
by that time...
David Olds (Team Fluffy Bunny):
Oops! In all of the excitement I forgot that John
and Marcy had finished a little bit ahead of you guys. It was
very exciting for all of those last spots with teams desperately
trying to sprint and at the same time stay together as a team.
One of the really wild things was that the team in
blue, I think that they were from LA, was with us on the very
slow moving local bus back to downtown and inexplicably got off
to wait, I think, for the express. If they had stayed on our bus
they would've finished no worse than 5th in the semis. As it was,
they were separated by about 30 feet from each other at the end,
with one of them ahead of you guys, the other behind, so they
couldn't cross the line.
Who would have thought that a race like that would
come down to that kind of finish?
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