04 May 2003: "It was a chance to go around the world, and I'm completely enjoying that," Paul McCarthy said during last week's final leg in the month-long Land Rover G4 Global Challenge, across southern Utah in the United States.
That summed up the attitude which Ireland's competitor had maintained throughout the event, which ended last weekend. He gained a reputation amongst his fellow competitors from 15 other countries as the laid-back Irishman who didn't put extreme competitiveness first.
The taking part, in the tradition of the old saying, was more important than anything else.
But how he took part kept him in the upper levels of the competition right through to the final day. And when I joined him for the last week of the adventure, he had proved his place as a true sporting ambassador for Ireland, first in the snowy Catskills in New York State and beyond, then across South Africa, following that into some of the toughest territory of Western Australia.
Now it was against the awesome background of the canyon lands of southern Utah that he would further show outdoor skills old and new, in the race for points towards the first winner for the 2003 inaugural event, the first of its kind to be sponsored by Land Rover since it pulled out of the famous Camel event in 1998.
And sitting behind him and his team-mate for the Utah leg - Kitt Stringer from Canada - in their Land Rover Discovery, one of the realisations that I came to was just how difficult this land must have been to conquer in the Conostega covered wagons of the Old West.
It was tough enough in the Land Rover Discovery to travel some of the 'trails' through the canyons, up along their walls and down from the tops of the buttes of sandstone, which were as ropey as they come, and for this writer with a well-embedded fear of sheer drops, absolutely terrifying. Many times I just closed my eyes.
But the cars, and the contestants driving them followed by their Land Rover support teams, rarely so much as hiccupped in the tough terrain. Though I understand that Australia took its toll of a few Range Rovers that were driven harder than they would ever be in normal life.
For Paul McCarthy, a stonemason from Ventry in Co Kerry, and his colleagues, it was both a series of feats of endurance and a willingness to do things that most of us - certainly this writer - would just not countenance.
Climbing sheer cliffs and abseiling and bungee-jumping are high, literally, on that list. Less fearful are kayaking - on locations as diverse as Sydney Harbour and down the Colorado River - and mountain-biking and running, both of which last Paul had not done before. No more than he had climbed before, but he found he had an aptitude for that.
Running caused him problems, re-erupting an old knee injury from surfing on the Dingle shores. On the other hand, when required to run on rocky terrain, his experience of jumping across rocky Kerry shorelines paid off to the extent that he regularly overtook more experienced competitors on these particular events.
The contestants were required each day to use navigational skills to drive to a series of 'Hunters', locations where they then had to carry out a task that might involve any one, or a combination of the tasks I've mentioned above.
They gained individual points for time they took to do the tasks, and for their success in predicting each morning whether they would be the first, second, third and so on team to arrive at each location. Driving time between locations in many cases, in my Utah experience, could be as long as three hours. And they had to get to a new camp location each evening by a set time, or lose all the points they'd gained for the day.
It was also an exercise in working as teams, as each contestant paired with a different competitor for each leg. Beginning with the east coast USA leg, Paul had worked with the UK, German, and USA contestants before teaming with Kitt.
Sitting behind them was an education in personality examination, as they drove from Las Vegas to Snow Canyon in Utah, from there to the Pink Coral Sands National Park where were were snowed on, then to Bryce Canyon where we lost time by taking a wrong turn, but saw part of the canyon's marvellous facilities as compensation, and then across through the Escalante Grand Staircase to Lake Powell, finally ending up near Moab, the 'Adventure Capital of America'.
I say it short, but the sequence represents a hell of a long journey in five days.
It was also a smelly one. Paul had warned me that 'by Thursday' the vehicle would stink to high heaven, from the drying of sweaty socks, the sweet pong of discarded fruit remains, and general lack of showering by the occupants - including this writer. He was wrong. By Wednesday, the Disco, and all of us, reeked.
As for the personalities, Kitt was by nature very competitive, and tended to react to other competitors in a confrontational way when they didn't do things straighforwardly, while Paul would simply not let that kind of thing cause him problems.
"Listen, they're just storing up bad karma for themselves," he said on one occasion.
"Sure, but maybe I'm their karma, and I should beat the shit out of them," Kitt retorted.
You get my drift.
Anyway, it was an extraordinary journey for me to participate in, even if only for the last quarter. Truth to tell, it was enough, because sleeping in my own G4 Igloo tent reminded me of all the reasons why I gave up camping about 30 years ago.
And, I suspect, that the future of G4 will require a less 'structured' set of tasks for the competitors, so that there is a greater 'challenge'.
Such as, perhaps, being woken at one in the morning and told they have to cross the Colorado River to the next camp, but will need to build their own bridge to get the vehicles across?
It'll be somebody else's turn to cover it then for Ireland, I hope.
(This article first appeared in the Irish Times on April 30, 2003.)
