RICHIE MCCAW | Former All Blacks captain recapping the GODZONE Adventure Race

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Scotty (0:46)

Hey, Iz, I don't know what you were doing with your week. Actually, I do. You were sunning in the Gold Coast. But that's just you and I've been working 15-hour days and-

Izzy (0:58)

I wasn't flying a helicopter looking at people hurt. I'll tell you that right now.

Scotty (1:02)

Creating content for the broadsheets of this world. But I'll tell you what McCaw was doing. He was forcing people against their will to traverse more than 600 kilometers of Marlborough back country over mountains, through rivers, possibly under them, over roads. I don't know how they found their way, half of them. I don't even know if they've found everyone yet, but he's on the line. Richie McCaw, the GODZONE, has been one. Thank goodness for that. Is everyone alive?

Richie McCaw (1:32)

Hey guys. Yeah, no, everyone got across the finish line yesterday. So it was a pretty big week for those teams, but yeah, it all went pretty well. And even though a few said, it's one of the toughest things I've done, there was quite a few smiles with the sun out and picked in when they got the finish line with the pie and a beer in the hand. It was great to see.

Scotty (1:55)

Awesome. Six days, 21 hours and 15 minutes. So let's just call it an entire week. Sophie Hart, Chris Fawn, Simone Meyer, Sam Clarke, that is the team that has won Chapter 12 of NZ GODZONE. What did you do to these people?

Tell me who designed this course. Were you involved? Why was it tough? What did they have to do?

Richie McCaw (2:23)

Yeah, it was a big course. But one of the things that GODZONE has got a reputation for is that it is tough and that you're probably only going to, at best, 30 to 40% of the teams finish the whole course. So that's the way it's designed.

There's a little bit of weather that plays a part. But also, I did a couple of the recces and when you're fresh and you just sort of do one bit of the leg and say, oh yeah, they can go through here, you go, oh, that'd be fine. But it's easy when you're fresh. But four, five days in, when you plough through the bush with a pack ruff on your back, it's a bit of a different story. But I think the mixed terrain, like up on the second or third track was 50-odd kilometers, but it was hot and up high and out in the sun. And that takes a fair bit out of you. So sort of the combination of that adds up. But from what everyone said, it was epic, some great places to go and see, but some bit of suffering along the way, which is what it should be.

Izzy (3:29)

Was there some hairy moments, Rico? You would have had the bird's eye view up there in the chopper and they would have been looking at you going, look at you, we're slogging the way up this mountain. Was there any hairy moments? I know you had to change the course because of weather.

Richie McCaw (3:42)

Yeah, to be fair, it was really only that last day, but early on, we were down Avon Valley Lodge, we're based out of it, there's a big loop over a hill called Fernie Gear and Barometer. I landed a couple of times with some people getting some footage in there, and as the team walked past, I was like, man, that would be quite cool to be out doing that again, but they didn't really even acknowledge me going, and I turned over the helicopter. But I got to say, we went back to the lodge and had a couple of oysters for dinner. I was like, it's actually quite nice to be out doing that, but I think there was some challenging bits, there's no doubt. There was one team, they had to carry their bikes over a saddle called Acheron Saddle into the Molesworth. It got pretty cold and gnarly one night there, depending on who was up there. But then the last, well second last day, it was a good, subtly hit out in the Molesworth Sounds, and we had to lock everyone down without putting them on the water and stuff. So it was a bit of a shame, but in some ways it worked out pretty cool because yesterday, it meant the teams all rolled in within about six hours of each other. So it was a cool atmosphere on the finish line and it wasn't like they missed out on that much. They'd done a fair, fair, well, most of this course anyway. So it was a bit as great to see smiles and cursing the few of us that were standing there that helped put the course together, but also the other side of it saying how cool it was. So it'll be interesting to see how their reflections and they recover a little bit.