Camel Trophy



Adventure History

WINNING IS PART, TAKING PART IS ALL

The Camel Trophy is one of life's last great adventures: a journey of self-discovery, international camaraderie and survival against some of the world's most beautiful, rugged and hostile land. This annual "Olympics of Four-Wheel Drive" combines adventure, expedition and competition in a unique challenge of courage, resilience and driving skills: a spectacle that provides exceptional and unforgettable experiences for its participants.

The event began in 1980 when three German teams took on the challenge of driving 1,000 miles of Brazil's "Highway of Tears": the Transamazonica Highway. The teams set off as unkown adventurers but were welcomed home as heroes. This small group had captured the imagination of nations around the world and millions were fascinated by their feat.

From that early start, the Camel Trophy Adventure has grown into one of the most internationally-renowned amateur adventure expeditions in the world. More than one million enthusiasts apply each year for the forty slots on the Camel Trophy. Only two persons from each of the participating nations are chosen to represent their respective countries.

In 1981, five German teams tackled a 1,000-mile crossing of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Land Rovers were selected then and each year since as the only vehicles tough enough to survive the challenge. Christian Swoboda and Knuth Mentel drove their Range Rovers to victory through volcanic mountain ranges and tropical swamps.

The Camel Trophy Adventure became an international event in 1982 when two teams each from Germany, Holland, Italy, and the U.S. traversed Papua New Guinea. Challenging Special Tasks were introduced, designed to assess participants' driving and survival skills.

The Italian team of Cesare Geraudo and Giuliaro Giongol took home the trophy. Team USA I, Rob Comstock and Paul Haven, finished fourth, while USA II, Bob Peters and Ken Arnold, tied for fifth.

The first Camel Trophy on the African continent was held in 1983. The conditions on the 1,000-mile drive from Kinshasa to Kisangani, Zaire, were diverse, difficult and extremely demanding for the seven teams from Holland, Portugal, Hong Kong, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The Camel Trophy doctor was a great asset to both the participants and to the indigenous people as he held clinics and administered medicine in many of the small villages along the route. It was a contribution to the local population that was to become synonymous with the event. In the end, the Dutch pairing of Henk Bont and Franz Heij won this second international Camel Trophy.

To mark the fifth anniversary of the event, Camel Trophy returned to Brazil in 1984. Ten teams from five countries picked up where the first event had left off and covered 1,000 miles of the Transamazonica Highway that had not been driven in the initial Adventure. A severe rainy season made it impossible to drive the originally-planned route; the alternative route proved little easier for the teams and they faced a seemingly endless sea of mud in their Land Rover 110s. Maurizo Lavi and Alfredo Redaelli brought Italy its second victory.

The Team Spirit Award was introduced in 1985 when Camel Trophy headed to the Indonesian jungles of Borneo. This award recognized the need for cooperation and camaraderie in the midst of the competition. A record sixteen teams from nine countries fought torrential rains, perilous trails and fast-flowing swollen rivers, sometimes moving only two or three kilometres a day. The German team of Heinz Kallin and Bernd Strohdach were the overall winners, and the Brazilian team of Carlos Probst and Tito Rosenberg won the Team Spirit Award.

Australia hosted the longest-ever Camel Trophy Adventure in 1986; the route wound 2,011 miles from Cooktown to Darwin. Fourteen teams from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, the Canary Islands, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Spain, Switzerland and the United States participated.

Progress across the dry and dusty outback was rapid, by comparison with Borneo, and the convoy averaged almost 150 miles each day during the 13-day expedition. The French pair of Jacques Mambre and Michel Courvallet won overall, and Glenn Jones and Ron Begg of Australia won the Team Spirit Award. Representing the U.S., Frank Smith and Carl Guffey finished eighth.

1987 marked the first ever north-south 4x4 journey in Madagascar's history. The landscape and weather conditions on the island varied from tropical rainforest in the north, where storms and driving rain caused sever flooding, to arid savannahs and scorching heat in the south. Turkey replaced Australia for a fourteen-team convoy on the 1,407-mile adventure. Mauro Miele and Vincenzo Tota gave Italy its third overall win, with the U.S. team of Tom Collins and Don Floyd finishing a close second. Jaime Puig and Victor Muntane of Spain captured the Team Spirit Award.

In 1988, the little-known island of Sulawesi was selected to host a new format Camel Trophy event with the introduction of two distinct series of Special Tasks. Twelve nations fielded teams (Brazil, Malaysia, and U.S. dropped out, while Argentina was added). The Turkish duo of Galip Gurel and Ali Deveci dominated the new Special Tasks, winning all but one to claim the overall trophy. Marc Day and Jim Benson of Great Britain had their names inscribed on the Team Spirit Award.

For its tenth anniversary, Camel Trophy again returned to the steamy Amazon jungle for what was arguably the most difficult Camel Trophy of all. The 1989 route was Brazilian Highway 163 from Alta Floresta to Santarem and on to Manaus by barge. The teams were in knee-deep mud day after day, and progress often was measured in yards instead of miles. Brazil replaced Argentina, and Yugoslavia joined the competition, for a total of thirteen teams. All made it to the finish line with brothers Bob and Joe Ives of Great Britain winning overall and Frank Dewitte and Peter Denys of Belgium taking Team Spirit accolades.

To mark the arrival of a new decade, Camel Trophy broke barriers in 1990. The event moved from its familiar jungle backdrop to the mystical setting of eastern Siberia, and the newly-launched Land Rover Discovery Tdi made its debut as the official team vehicle.

Sixteen teams drove 1,000 miles from Bratsk to Irkutsk, Siberia -- the first international motoring event in the Soviet Union. Greece, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. joined the event, while Brazil was again absent. The special tasks included physical tests as well as rally competitions with running, orienteering and canoeing added to the challenges. Holland's Rob Kamps and Stijn Luykx won the Camel Trophy, and Canary Islanders Fernando Martin and Carlos Barreto won the Team Spirit Award. Lea Magee and Fred Monsees of the U.S. placed eleventh overall.

The 1991 Camel Trophy Adventurers had to drive around the clock to recover from five days lost combating flash floods and thick mud during the rainy season in the east African nations of Tanzania and Burundi. Newcomer Poland raised the total number of teams to seventeen. Joseph Altmann and Peter Widhalm of Austria won the first Special Tasks Award; Menderes Utku and Bulent Ozler of Turkey won the overall Camel Trophy and Team Spirit Award. A sixth place overall finish awaited Webb Arnold and Bill Burke of the U.S.

In 1992, the sixteen teams (only Yugoslavia dropped out) followed a route from Manaus, Brazil, to the Caribbean coastal city of Georgetown, Guyana. The event promised to be as varied and challenging as its most demanding predecessors, but the conditions were drier than predicted. Nevertheless, teams encountered conditions of a different nature as clouds of red dust obscured treacherous pot holes and deep ruts. The French team of Patrick Lafabrie and Eric Cassaigne won the Special Tasks Award; Dan Amon and Jim West of the U.S. won the Team Spirit Award and finished second overall; and Alwin Arnold and Urs Brugisser of Switzerland took the overall Camel Trophy.

1993 brought the U.S. its first overall victory with team members Tim Hensley and Michael Hussey. The convoy circled the Malaysian state of Sabah, located on the northern tip of the island of Borneo. Their route included some of the world's oldest and most remote jungles - including "The Lost World" of the Maliau Basin where the teams erected a scientific research station in 24 hours. A team from Malaysia replaced Great Britain for one year, and the event continued with sixteen participating nations. Paul Gasser and Loup Tournand of France won the Special Tasks Award; Canary Islanders Ellis Martin and Francisco Zarate won the Team Spirit Award.

In 1994, eighteen teams, including the first Camel Trophy women, traveled 1,563 miles through the most varied terrain and diverse climatic conditions of the event. Starting in the swampy lowlands of western Argentina and eastern Paraguay, the teams passed through the unexplored regions of central Argentina's "El Impenetrable," crossed the Andes at 16,000 feet and navigated the world's driest desert, the Atacama in Chile. Hungary, Scandinavia and South Africa came to Camel Trophy for the first time, while Austria did not participate. Overall winners were Jorge Corella and Carlos Martinez of Spain, who also took the Special Tasks Award. Newcomer South Africa's team of Etienne van Eeden and Klaus Albert Hass won the Team Spirit Award. Mack Barber and Dave Simpson of the U.S. placed sixth overall.

In 1995, team members from twenty countries drove a 1,060-mile route through the Central American Mundo Maya countries of Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The Czech Republic and Israel made their first Camel Trophy appearances as temperatures soared above 115 degrees and the humidity remained steady at 95%. For the first time, the U.S. fielded a female team member. The Czech Republic duo of Zdenec Nemec and Marek Rocejdl won both the overall Camel Trophy and the Special Tasks Award, while Russians Pavel Bogomolov and Sergei Fenev took Team Spirit. Daphne Greene and Jim Swett finished eleventh for the U.S.

The U.S. team of Ken Cameron and Fred Hoess took home a second place overall finish and third place in Team Spirit voting in 1996 when Camel Trophy completed the first-ever east-west vehicle crossing of the Indonesian province of Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo. The unrelenting rains resulted in hundreds of miles of knee-deep mud, which threatened to halt the convoy after less than half of the 1,100-mile route had been traveled. The twenty participating teams included newcomer Morocco and a second Scandinavian team, replacing Hungary and Israel. Greeks Miltiadis Farmakis and Nikolaos Sotirchos won both the overall Camel Trophy and the new Land Rover Driving Award, while Dmitri Surin and Alexei Svirkov of Russia claimed the Special Tasks Award and Team Spirit went to South Africans Sam de Beer and Pieter du Plessis.