The Red Bulletin August 2020 (US)

in places along the route like pearls on a necklace. But
the traverse didn’t look egregiously hard. They were
reminded that day of an old truism about creating
adventure races: Don’t believe what you see on a map.
The pools were actually ponds of what Hodder,
51, characterizes as “really, really cold” water, deep
enough to require stretches of swimming. The
shallower sections served up jumbles of slick, algaecoated
rocks hidden just under the surface of the
dark water, making every footfall a gamble. “It was
a matter of finding a speed where you’re not bashing
your shins or falling off rocks,” says Flavelle, 61.
There was no getting around the water, either: The
jungle along the banks was denser than the beats
on a K-Def record. In the end it took nine hours to
stumble, slip, curse, wallow and churn their way
through the canyon—and all four are strong
athletes from the mountains of British Columbia.
“When you’re tired and wobbly,” Flavelle says,
“you’re just fighting for every step.”
On the other side they looked at each other in
the dimming light, aware that they faced a
reckoning. If they eliminated the difficult leg from
the race, they’d just beaten themselves up for
nothing—and would still have to identify and
execute a Plan B the next day, to connect the east
and west sides of the island. “We would be cutting
out the heart of the course,” Hodder says.
But if they kept it? They would need warming
tents to treat hypothermic racers. With 66 teams of
four participants each navigating that terrain, the
potential for unscripted carnage—broken ankles,
Designing a televised
adventure race is like
writing an epic story. You
need crucibles of danger.
dislocated shoulders—would be significant. And
with the low cloud cover, flying in a rescue chopper
would be dicey.
Even if there were no injuries, that 6 miles
would likely destroy any number of teams that had
already been racing almost around the clock for
somewhere between five and eight days by this
point. It would be great TV. But there’s a line, and
they were right on it. As Hodder puts it, “The
question in our minds was, Is it too much?”
Designing a televised adventure race is like
writing an epic story. To create a great one
you need crucibles of indecision and danger
(or at least the appearance of them); moments of
rollicking fun and meditative ones; and challenges
that deliver racers to both Herculean mountaintop
triumphs and morale-killing slogs.
To pull off such a race, someone has to assemble
all of those narrative parts. Which is why, when
producers Mark Burnett and Lisa Hennessy decided
in the summer of 2018 to revive Eco-Challenge after
a 16-year hiatus, they called Hodder and Flavelle.
COREY RICH/AMAZON
The race's start is pure bedlam as 66 teams scramble into outrigger canoes and fight rush-hour traffic as they head toward the sea.
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