Stage 2 - Continued

The race (saga) continues. The coverage was good enough that I reckon I can almost figure out what's going on but not good enough to keep me up past midnight.

From the start of the stage teams seemed to go in many different directions which seemed odd since I thought most of the CP's were mandatory. Anyway here's what I can figure out about winning the race (each stage is like a big multi-discipline rogaine)

1. The most important thing is to finish each stage inside the cut-off time
2. Get as many of the Mandatory CP's along the way inside the cut-off
3. Get as many bonus CP's as you can inside the time limit for each stage

The race will be decided by the following criteria (I think - but I'm happy to be corrected if someone has worked it out differently):

1. Number of Mandatory CP's - if team are equal then
2. Number of Bonus CP's - if teams are still equal
3. Lowest cumulative time

Confusing enough for everyone.

Sleepmonsters have another report but Blackheart didn't rate a mention. It appears as though Nike and Orion Health are fighting out the early lead followed by Lundhags Adventure, Team Finland, Quechua, Buff Thermocool, etc in no particular order.

Twitter did however provide me with the following update - Verbatim.
"RT: @arwc2009 Live is stuff for the Australian Champions, #03 blackheart.com.au . They just missed the mandatory CP 8b at Aigra Nova"

It does appear that many teams even at this early stage as just picking and choosing which CP's they visit - Mandatory or otherwise. I expect we'll have to wait for the end of Stage 2 - Trek, MTB, Trek before the teams sport-ident sticks are downloaded and we get some updated results ... Back to work.