Ryan Mendes has put T&T on the map and
taken adventure racing to new heights

They’ve repelled down cliffs in Scotland Bay, kayaked in the Oropouche River and trekked through mountainous terrain to reach the incredibly beautiful Paria Waterfalls at three in the morning. Pilot and entrepreneur, Ryan Mendes, along with his band of adventure racing “brothers”, is well known in the sporting community for his passion for adventure and multi-sport racing. A fter all, he brought these sports to Trinidad and Tobago on April 14th 2002 and has seen hundreds of Trinidadian and Tobagonian sportsmen compete alongside world champions from the USA, New Zealand and South Africa.

To say that the 35 year-old Mendes has a profound enthusiasm for the sport is a definite understatement, he trains for 18-20 hours a week, which varies according to his commitment to spending time with family and his work as an airline pilot. Currently employed with Caribbean Airlines, he is a licensed fixed-wing and helicopter pilot, having trained at flight schools in F lorida, USA, after graduating from Fatima College, Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Ryan Mendes’ interest in adventure racing was peaked in1999 after watching a Mark Burnett (the famed producer of the Survivor series) television show. The programme featured athletes competing in several sports including kayaking, running, hiking/mountaineering and mountain bike
riding, while navigating a course with a compass. Every year the event was staged in a new, exotic country.

Excited about the possibilities, he decided to “put together a team from Trinidad to go and do it” and looked to friend and fellow tri-athlete, Jason Gooding. They entered the Adventurous Concepts, Adventure Racing series in F lorida and were leading in the points category when they
had to pull-out because of lack of funding. He then joined a group of F loridians to take part in one of the biggest races in F lorida and was pleased when the team placed second.

Then he realized that Trinidad and Tobago “has everything you could ever want in adventure racing”, a beautiful varying landscape of mountains, rivers, oceans – why not bring it home?

That’s when A dventure Racing kicked off with a bang in 2002 – Ryan Mendes, Jason Gooding and Bruce Hay staged the first adventure race at Chaguaramas with 114 participants competing in three main activities and three categories with varying times and courses. Lucozade came on board as sponsor form the start. Athletes competed in three sports – running, swimming and orienteering. The following year the format was amended to include kayaking, an increasingly popular sport on the island. Robert Sharpe and Colin Wilson emerged as winners over the years.

In 2005, when participation began to drop off in the more difficult categories of the adventure races, he then focused more on multi-sport races.This sport is similar to adventure racing, but without the navigational aspect and more of a focus on individual competition, rather than teamwork, although relay teams do participate. Since 2003, Mendes has been attending the Speights Coast to Coast Multisport race in New Zealand, the unofficial world championship for the sport. There he became friends with the champion, Richard Ussher, and Mendes invited him to take part in the Trinidadian adaptation of the race. Ussher jumped at the opportunity, he “loved coming to the Caribbean, the country the hospitality and came back again this year,” Mendes explained.

The Tropical Power Coast 2 Coast multi-sport race was held on October 6th and 7th this year; individual competitors and relay teams were enthusiastic about the road cycling, running and kayaking course which Mendes describes as a sort of “off-road, iron man, triathlon”. N ot surprisingly, the race gained a great deal of media attention and the number of participants had also grown (with 24 athletes taking part in 2005) to more than double in number this year.

Richard Ussher won in 2005 and again returned this year to once again win the championship trophy and US$3,000. His wife Elina Ussher, the defending champion, also won in the female category, with Canadian, Lina Augaitis in second place and local athlete Dianne Henderson in third. Another world-class athlete, South African ‘Dusi’ long distance paddle racing champ, Martin Dryer, also took part in the two-day race which began at Toco and ended in Chaguaramas. Dryer would place second in the race overall. The relay team of Robert Cadiz, Raymond Ramcharan and Earl Rahaman-Noronha emerged winners in their category.

nown for his athleticism and humour by friends, the unassuming Mendes, gives credit for the entrepreneurial success of the business, ECO Adventures, to his partners. ECO Adventures evolved after sponsors and participants showed an increasing interest in supporting the events. So he decided to formalize the business structure and form a company. He looked to friend Bruce H ay as co-founder; and they created a board of directors that consisted of Cristina Legarza (Mendes’ wife), Shira Mohammed, and Keron Kong. Mendes explained recently that the group brings a range of talents to the company.

“I’m known for my passion, Cristina is good at the logistics, Bruce is good at the business [side] and accounting, and Keron and Shira are accountants… They restrain me and bring a balance… I am by no means the brains, but I do have ideas and the rest of them can put it to [work] a lot more effectively than I could,” Mendes explains with a laugh.

In 2003 British Gas, BG, the multinational energy company, approached Mendes to manage the course for their very successful charity event the ‘BG Energy Challenge’, which is based on a similar race in the UK . Each year ECO Adventures has effectively managed the challenging course
of this increasing successful adventure race, which has raised millions for various charitable organizations throughout the country.

A national record-holder for swimming in the 800 metre free style, (until the record was broken by Sebastian Paddington a few years later) he also emerged as winner in the local Cross Harbour annual open water race champion in 1987. He then “dabbled” in surfing and triathlons” before entering A dventure and multi-sport racing. Ryan Mendes has had one or two hard breaks, literally, over the years, snapping a clavicle while “trying to show-off while mountain biking” and twisting an ankle or two; but he remains committed to developing a unique sport and a business venture which effectively promotes Trinidad and Tobago on a global scale.

Anna Walcott-Hardy, Communications consultant and former Campus Communications Manager at UWI. Anna Walcott Hardy is an honours graduate of Boston University, USA. She has over 15 years of experience in Marketing and Communications, having worked in publishing houses and advertising agencies in the USA and Trinidad and Tobago. Over the years she has received advertising
awards from various international institutions and agencies.