Juddy’s Top 10 Predictions

Robin Judkins has spent 30 years organising New Zealand’s favourite race. The Speight’s Coast to Coast created adventure sports and most of the world’s best have cut their teeth in the 243k world multisport championship race across New Zealand’s South Island. Judkins has watched them all and his annual “Top 10” predictions have become something of a book-makers must-have come race day.

“Richard Ussher is the favourite for the 30th Speight’s Coast to Coast,” states Judkins without a hint of hesitation. “He’s a four-time champion, his win last year was his most impressive yet, and he’s the most experienced contender.”

Judkins is right. If Richard Ussher can recapture the form that won him the Speight’s Coast to Coast in 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2011, he will be hard to beat. And having first participated in the 243k race across the South Island in 2000, he has as much experience on the iconic course as his main competition combined.

Judkins, however, warns against Coast to Coast complacency, saying. “Richard learned that the hard way in 2007,”

“He had won the two previous years, but in 2007 Gordon Walker from Auckland turned the race upside down by attacking right from the start.”

In 2007 Gordon Walker attacked the opening 55k road cycle, a tactic not often used and never before successful. It succeeded in undermining Ussher’s speciality, the following 34k mountain run, and Judkins says the man most expected to challenge this year might try the same race plan.

“The last two years Dougal Allan from Wanaka has been the best of a group of young up and comers and his strongest discipline is cycling. If he takes it to Richard in that opening stage, it would change the face of the race just like Walker did in 2007.”

Allan, originally from Foxton, has finished second for the last two years. But the 26 year old is just one of several fast-improving young men, such as Aucklanders Carl Bevins (4th in 2011) and James Kuegler (8th in 2011), and Marlborough multisporters Jeremy McKenzie (6th in 2011) and Dan Moore (2nd in Two Day).

Additionally, standout internationals, such as adventure racing world champion Jacky Boisset from France, Scottish Coast to Coast champion Andy Blow, Swedish multisport stars Olaf Sunstrom and Simon Niemi, and Trinidad multisport champion Clarence Tobias will provide dark horse interest.

Judkins, however, says the real dark horse will be Lower Hutt builder James Coubrough. Coubrough, a former New Zealand representative runner, won the 2011 Two Day Coast to Coast and has since enjoyed wins in the Coromandel Classic, the Moehau Man, the prestigious Goat mountain run and the Rangitikei River Race.

“Last year was this guys first serious go at multisport and he won the Two Day race,” says Judkins. “If you look at the results he did each section in similar times to Richard Ussher. Guys like him and Dougal Allan have shown they have the ability, so I think this year’s race will be all about Richard’s Ussher’s experience.”

Judkins also expects experience to be the difference in this year’s women’s race. With defending champion Sophie Hart not entered, favourites are former champions Elina Ussher (Nelson) and Fleur Pawsey (Chch), who between them has done almost 20 Speight’s Coast to Coast, and intriguingly, both have finished first and second in the world title race.

Ussher, second last year while Pawsey was in the winning women’s team, would be favourite on recent form. But both are specialist mountain runners so the competition is likely to be fierce throughout. Other contenders include Taumarunui’s Rachel Cashin, who has finished in the top five for the last four years, Brazilian champion Camila Nicolau, who has based herself in New Zealand this summer to train specifically for the Speight’s Coast to Coast, current adventure racing world champion Myriam “Mimi” Guillot, and Christchurch-based Dane Sia Svendsen, who has won the teams race twice and is expected to light up the run section.

Judkins, however, wonders if the Usshers might have an extra piece of motivation up their sleeve.

“Elina and Richard Ussher have a really good chance of becoming the first husband and wife winners in the same year,” says Judkins. “Race record holders Keith and Andrea Murray are husband and wife, but they won on separate occasions, in 1994 and 1997.”

“If Richard and Elina Ussher could do a husband and wife double, that would be a great way to crown the 30th anniversary of the Speight’s Coast to Coast.”

The 2012 30th anniversary Speight’s Coast to Coast is scheduled for February 10 and 11.  For more info see: www.coasttocoast.co.nz.