Camel Trophy.

The Camel Trophy is loosely referred to as the Olympics of 4WD. The first one used jeeps in the Amazon in 1980. Ever since they have used Land Rover products. Over a million applicants vie for spots on the two-man national teams. About a dozen are selected to compete in national trials. Four finalists go to international trials which further narrow down the team to two, plus two alternates, plus two team journalists. Mundo Maya '95 was held May 17-June 8 in Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Points are awarded for Special Tasks. Teams also vote for the one with the best team spirit in the expedition which covers 1,000 miles of very challenging terrain. Overall winning team gets the trophy, which is three hands holding aloft a globe and vehicle.

Women first participated in the Camel Trophy in 1994, with Carine Duret on the French team and Christel Persson on the Swedish team.

Camel cigarettes (RJR Nabisco) sponsored the first event. Since then it has been taken over by Worldwide Brands Inc., a wholly-owned subsidary of RJR, organized in 1981, which owns the Camel Trophy trademark. WBI Germany had launched the `Camel Collection' of leisure wear in 1977, and in 1991 WBI diversified into `Camel Trophy Adventure Wear' (boots, clothing, watches), presently marketed only in Europe and the Far East. In 1992 Land Rover entered into a formal co-sponsorship agreement with WBI. Plans now call for North American LR dealers to market the `adventure wear'.

Here is the history of the Camel Trophy in a nutshell:

Year Place           Vehicle     #teams  Winners
---- --------------- ----------- ------- --------
1980 Transamazonica  Jeep         3(Ger) Ger (Klaus Karthna-Dircks, Uwe Machel)
1981 Sumatra         Range Rover  5(Ger) Ger (Christian Swoboda, Knuth Mentel)
1982 Papua NewGuinea Range Rover  8      Italy (Cesare Geraudo, Giuliano Giongo)
1983 Zaire           Ser III 88   7      Neth  (Henk Bont, Franz Heij)
1984 Brazil          110         12      Italy (Maurizio Lavi, Alfredo Redaelli)
1985 Borneo          90          16      Ger (Heinz Kallin, Bernd Strodach)
1986 Australia       90          14      France (Jacques Mambre, Michel Courvallet)
1987 Madagascar      Range Rover 14      Italy (Mauro Miele, Vincenzo Tota)
1988 Sulawesi        110         12      Turkey (Galip Gurel, Ali Deveci)
1989 The Amazon      110         14      UK (Bob Ives, Joe Ives)
1990 Siberia-USSR    Discovery   16      Neth (Rob Kamps, Stijn Luyx)
1991 Tanzania-Burundi Discovery  17      Turkey (Menderes Utku, Bulent Ozler)
1992 Guyana          Discovery   16      Switz (Alwin Arnold, Urs Bruggisser)
1993 Sabah-Malaysia  Discovery   16      USA (Tim Hensley, Michael Hussey)
1994 Arg-Parag-Chile Discovery   18      Spain (Jorge Corella, Carlos Martinez)
1995 Mundo Maya      Discovery   20      Czech Republic
1996 Borneo          Discovery

`The Legend in Adventure' continues...

T. F. Mills                                              tomills@du.edu
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