The Blackwater: Escape and Evasion Adventure Race was announced just a few days ago, and already it’s building buzz in the AR community. Mike Bitton from CheckPointZero.com has written an excellent article about the event after speaking with Primal Quest CEO Don Mann who is managing this new race. The article takes a peek at what we can expect out of the Blackwater E&E and explores the potential role of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater Worldwide, in the future of adventure racing.

The following is an excerpt from the article:

Don Mann, former U.S. Navy SEAL and the CEO of Primal Quest, is an adventure racing entrepreneur with an unusually rich history. During his decades as an “operator” on the Teams, Mann did countless things he can’t tell anyone. But here’s a little something he told me. Adventure racing has a new prince. And it’s a prince with a capital P.

Back when Mann was on duty at SEAL Team 2, prepping to lead fellow sailors through a Raid Gauloises expedition adventure race, he was approached by a member of SEAL Team 8, one Erik Prince, about what essentially amounted to a sponsorship for Mann’s adventure racing team. Prince liked the concept, Mann said, of a SEAL Team competing on a global stage. And, lucky for Mann and his AR teammates, Prince had just come in to some money. “He wrote me a check on the spot,” Mann recalled. The men have been friends ever since.

To read the entire story click here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 12:19 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.