4 Deserts - 4 Deserts Champions

4 Deserts Champions

At the end of every edition of The Last Desert (Antarctica) the 4 Deserts Champion is crowned. From 2010 both a male and female champion was recognized in this way, and female champions from previous years have now been crowned retrosopectively.

The champion is determined by adding up the finishing rank of every competitor over the four races of the series to see who has the lowest aggregate score.

In 2012 The Last Desert (Antarctica) 2012 has proved to be a momentous race in 4 Deserts racing history. When the fifth edition of the event came to a close in the snowy setting of Danko Island yesterday, new records were being forged in all directions.

Anne-Marie Flammersfeld of Germany emerged as the first woman to ever win all four events in the 4 Deserts series—and not only that, she did it all in one year. “My objective was the 4 Deserts Grand Slam,” explains the 34-year old fitness trainer and sports scientist who is based in Switzerland. “I started training mid-2011. The Atacama Crossing was my first ultra ever and it was all about the first experience... It was really only after the Sahara Race that I knew I could do this.”

There was also a remarkable victory for overall race winner, Vicente Juan Garcia Beneito. The Spanish racer came to Antarctica having already won each of the 4 Deserts races in 2012, including the Atacama Crossing (Chile), the Gobi March (China) and Sahara Race (Egypt). By winning The Last Desert (Antarctica), he joins Ryan Sandes as the only other person to have been champion of every race in the 4 Deserts series—but Beneito has taken it up a notch by winning them all in one calendar year for the first time.

Garcia and Flammersfeld are now the first persons who ever won all four deserts in one calender year.

In 2010 Ryan Sandes of South Africa recorded the lowest and unbeatable aggregate score of 4 points, as he had won each of the 4 Deserts races he had entered.