Sam Jay: Taking Aim - Metro Weekly, August 6, 2020

Spotlight
Speedo Racer
Coree Woltering and Team Onyx blaze trails and scale mountains
on World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji.
BILLED AS THE WORLD’S TOUGHEST RACE, THE
11-day, multi-terrain Eco-Challenge Fiji, by all
accounts, lives up to its daunting title. Viewers can
judge for themselves with the August 14 release of Amazon
Prime’s World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji, a ten-episode
event hosted by Bear Grylls. Sixty-six teams from thirty
different countries run, climb, bike, sail, paddle, spelunk, and
swim through jungles and rivers, over mountains and the
Pacific, racing to claim victory.
"They definitely designed the course to make it just unforgiving,”
says elite ultra-runner Coree Woltering, who competed
in the Eco-Challenge as a member of Team Onyx — the first
all-Black, predominantly LGBTQ team in expedition racing.
“It takes an all-around athlete to be able to do something like
that, and just an extremely mentally strong person.”
Woltering would know. As a pro runner specializing in
competing at distances longer than a marathon, he just set a
formidable new record in June, running the
1,200-mile Ice Age Trail in under 22 days. The
Illinois native had been thinking of taking on
the Trail for a while, but, surprisingly, it was
life under the pandemic shutdown that made the enormous
undertaking possible. “Normally an effort that big would just
take too much out of me,” he says. “So I wouldn't be able to do
that in the middle of a racing season. But with COVID and no
races coming up, this was just kind of the perfect time to do it.”
Click Here to
Watch the Trailer
While the Ice Age Trail was the longest expedition
Woltering has completed — “three weeks of running and just
being out there every day” — he still calls Eco-Challenge Fiji
“the toughest race I've done.” And he hopes that his and Team
Onyx’s performance inspires others on their own boundary-pushing
adventures. “You don't see a lot of people of color
in the adventure racing world,” he says. “You don't even necessarily
see a ton in the outdoor [sporting] world, and especially
not at a high level. So I just think it's really important to be a
role model and show that people of color do love the outdoors.
We love adventure. We can do these things.”
Woltering recognizes a similar importance in representing
the LGBTQ community on the course. Yet, racing with
a purpose, he still makes a point of keeping the competition
fun. Known for racing in a pair of Speedos, the runner, who
found a fellow adventurer in his professional skydiver husband,
assures, “You'll definitely see a few Speedos in Eco-
Challenge.” The Lycra briefs might even be
Woltering’s secret weapon.
“It's really funny. I was racing a 50K in
Florida in 2015, and I was going to the beach, so,
of course, I packed a couple Speedos. But I also packed my running
shorts, or at least I thought I did. On race morning, I found
out that I forgot to pack my racing shorts. And so people are like,
‘It's Florida. No one cares. Just wear a Speedo.’ And I was like,
‘Okay.' So I wore a Speedo and I won the race.” —André Hereford
World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji is available for streaming starting August 14 on Prime Video. Visit www.amazon.com.
AUGUST 6, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM
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