The chasing teams had split apart yesterday with North Island team No Idea asserting its bid for second place by about 4pm, although trailing nearly 9hr behind Avaya.
Queenstown team Tiki Tour was in third place, about 3hr behind No Idea and 12hr behind the leaders.
Triple Coast to Coast champion Simone Maier, of Wanaka, gave an emotional interview in transition seven yesterday afternoon, describing how her fourth-placed team, Topsport, was battling to keep Sam Manson on his feet.
Manson, an experienced international multisporter and no stranger to the Coast to Coast and Godzone, has been suffering from foot infections since a gruelling 155km trek over the South Island’s main divide on Sunday.
Topsport was more than 19 hours down on Team Avaya around 4pm yesterday.
Maier said this year’s 10th anniversary race was one of the toughest adventure races she had ever done.
‘‘It’s been brutal. The other thing that makes it tough is you have an injured team member and it’s tough to keep going. I think they are doing bloody well . . . but it’s not pretty,’’ she said.
Maier said the race was now a head game, ‘‘not about so much the race but how we can keep moving as a team together’’.
The team had not been sure if they should continue but during a team talk, Manson said he did not want to quit.
Maier said they had decided to go as far as they could.
‘‘We don’t know if he is willing to take that pain to the finish line,’’ she said.
Meanwhile Team Avaya, featuring captain Nathan Fa’avae and Sophie Hart, of Nelson, Chris Forne of Queenstown and Stu Lynch of Auckland, were busy showing why they are world champions.
They were hundreds of kilometres ahead, part way through stage 8, a challenging 110km mountain bike ride.
Their route would take them up the Old Dunstan Rd, past Loganburn Reservoir, through the Rock and Pillar Range, and eventually to Outram Glen, following the Taieri Excursion Train line.
Any teams reaching Outram Glen with enough daylight to spare would be permitted to begin stage 9, a 38km lower Taieri River paddle that could take between four and seven hours to complete.
Race director Warren Bates said avoiding the ‘‘dark zone’’ would be on the athletes minds.
‘‘They will want to get through in daylight to not be held up by that . . . [It] would be very frustrating after racing so hard to have other teams catch up before the last trek up Brighton Beach – which could make it a run finish,” he said.
The first team could cross the finish about noon today.
