A MAJOR NEW MULTI-MEDIA SPORTS EVENT

The Great Race is the ultimate car rally, and a multi-media sports event that will become a major news story. In the winter of 2004, twenty cars, with three drivers in each, will race to be the first to drive overland from London to New York via the frozen wastes of Siberia, the Bering Strait, and Alaska. No-one has achieved this feat before. The aim of the race is to:

• provide fascinating, unique, multimedia entertainment

• achieve the last great land record and enter exploration history by bridging two continents divided by both the environment and politics

• be the first to triumph over the elements in one of the most inhospitable parts of the world

• add to the sum of human achievement - and understanding - by combining adventure with a purpose.

The Great Race is the overland equivalent of the BT Global Challenge, the world’s toughest yacht race, set up by Chay Blythe.

January 2005, twenty specially adapted four-wheel drive cars, each with three drivers, will leave London for the drive of a lifetime. It will indeed be the ultimate car journey, The Great Race will start in London and end at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. They must leave in January so they can cross the Bering Strait before it thaws having driven thousands of miles on Siberia’s frozen rivers, in temperatures that will drop to minus 50?C and below.

After driving from Russia back door in through America’s, They will ‘race’ for three months all the way to New York, via Alaska, Seattle and Detroit. The race will be organised by British explorer Steve Boultbee-Brooks and BBC Executive Producer Richard Creasey and will feature car drivers from all over the world.

The Great Race will be a major feature on BBCi. The race will be followed in daily text stories, personality features, photo stories, audio and video packages, and discussion forums. The discussion forums will introduce a crucial interactive element, which is unusual for an adventure project, because, for the first time, the general public will be part of the action. From the start of the project, they can choose the drivers; they can plot the exact position of their favourite driver who will be wearing a special GPS watch; e-mail suggestions and questions to the drivers as they undertake the challenge; cheer on their favourite team; and debate the inevitable cliff-hangers, and personal trials, tribulations and personal interaction of the drivers along the way.

Adventure With A Purpose. Leaving the world a better place than they found it will be a key component for the Great Race organisers. Fuel efficiency will be rewarded. Communication and medical centres, set up along the route, will be left in place for the indigenous people. All the speed sections will be on ice and will thaw when the summer comes, so leaving no permanent track damage.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Richard Creasey

In March 1994, Richard Creasey was team leader of the Ford London-New York Overland Challenge, which set out from London, drove through the Channel Tunnel and was the first ever team to drive all the way across the continent of Russia. It ended with a triumphant motorcade arrival at United Nations headquarters in New York. Richard’s project was sponsored by Ford and endorsed by the United Nations. It was broadcast on ITV in the UK (nine half hour programmes shown in peak time), on the Discovery Channel world-wide, and two years after the finish of the expedition, as a two hour special for PBS in North America. For all the successes, Richard failed to reach the Overland summit – his chosen vehicle, a prototype amphibious lifeboat developed by the Canadian Coastguard for Canada’s (cancelled) nuclear icebreakers, was unable to transverse this treacherous, half-frozen, 56-mile-wide Bering Strait.

Steve Brooks

In April 2002, British explorer Steve Brooks and his team designed and created Snowbird 6, an all-terrain vehicle, and succeeded in driving from Alaska to Big Diomede, the Russian Island in the middle of Bering Strait, proving, for the first time, that it is possible to drive across the treacherous Bering Strait. See:
Ice Challenger. The Outdoors Channel will broadcast a documentary about this remarkable journey in North America; the BBC will broadcast it in the UK. For all the success, Steve also failed to reach the Bering Strait summit; blocked by the bureaucracy of Russia, he was refused permission to drive to Russia’s mainland.

Working Together

Pooling their knowledge Steve and Richard demonstrably can achieve the last great land record by driving from America to Asia and Europe via the Bering Strait thereby creating a real and symbolic bridge between the two great continents in today’s world. Rather than do it themselves, Richard and Steve have decided to enable sixty drivers, from all corners of the world, to compete in the first The BBCi Great Race. Once achieved, Steve and Richard plan for The BBCi Great Race to be an annual project.

The Itinerary

The journey across from London to the Bering Strait will follow Richard’s tracks durhing the 1993/1994 Overland Challenge . Click here to see the detailed Ford London-New York Overland Challenge itinerary. From the Bering Strait, the teams will deviate from Richard's original route by driving south to Seatle to drive across the United States to New York.