Stage Six

As Stage six begins, there’s a persistent rain pattering down through the tree canopy smelling of new leaves. There’s a tapping on your jacket shoulders and the top of your cap as the rain demands to be let in. There’s a misty light filtering through from somewhere. The forest seems ancient, but somehow fresh and virginal. You would probably find it all very beautiful and poetically inspiring if you ever had the chance to look up from your feet – but that’s something you almost never do.Why? Because of the mud.

Mud, mud and more mud. Black glue. Mud that sticks to your boots until you have to stop and poke it off with a stick or it feels like you’re walking on heavy stilts. Mud that hides quietly under an innocent carpet of last autumn’s leaves, waits for you to pass by and then swallows your leg. You haven’t got a chance against this mud. It’s the same mud that also grabs hold of powerful, speeding cars as they try to escape and easily brings them to a complete halt in a second. Desperate tyres spin, spit and spray but get nowhere. Angry engines scream in protest at being stationary. It makes no difference. The mud has got hold of its victim and a primeval struggle begins.

Co-drivers pop out of cars like rabbits out of a hole, winch straps in hand, looking around for likely winching points. Calm but urgent bluetooth discussions take place through helmet microphones and, when these don’t seem to be working, energetic hand signals and a few old fashioned colourful expressions at full volume get the communications flowing nicely. What follows is some hard wading and slipping and sliding and hard hauling of winch lines for straight pulls or quickly improvised pulley systems to double pulling power, all in an effort to escape the clinging, determined, predatory, dark chocolate mud. And then, when you’re finally free after an epic battle, there’s, yes, more mud to come.

As I said yesterday, Stage 5 was tough this year. (Last night the organisers were still looking for one team of competitors 14 hours after they had started the 58 kilometre stage.) But, it seems, to cook up a delicious Croatia Trophy Stage 6 you need take all the ingredients of Stage 5 – gulleys, ravines, creeks, streams, near-vertical banks to ascend or descend and narrow winding tracks squeezing between trees – and simply add water. And the result? Yep. Mud, mud and more mud.

Carl Reuters