The Southern Ontario Amazing Race (SOAR) is set to leap into its 12th year.
On the weekend of June 5 to 7 teams will take part in a race around southern Ontario with many locations in Wellington County as potential stops.
However, the exact locations will be kept under wraps until they’re revealed to the teams during the race.
“We’ve been saying that the challenges just seem really fun this year and there’s … a few things that we’re working on that I would say are really adventurous and kind of trendy type things that are happening now and I think that the racers are really going to enjoy them and be challenged by them,” said one of the race creators Glenna Banda. “We’ve got something in the works too where we try and do one that’s sort of like the big ‘wow’ challenge so we’re still working out the details for that too.”
Last year’s “wow” challenge was rock climbing at Rattle Snake Point in Milton.
“We’ve had people inside a rock climbing gym but we were actually outdoors and climbed up the escarpment, so that was awesome,” Banda said.
Each year a committee comes up with new and fun challenges for the teams, narrowing it down to a final 18 for the race.
“We had close to 50 different ideas that came from the creative team so it’s actually a lot of work to pick out which ones you like the best and which are going to be the most exiting,” she said. “You have to balance them all with each other too so you don’t want to have all of them be really physical.”
This year’s grand prize will again be a $3,000 voucher to travel anywhere in the world, presented by Balnar Management Ltd. Banda also pointed out that there were prizes for various points in the competition to help keep people motivated.
“There are prizes for our top fundraiser … and then finishing first on day one gets a prize and then second and third place,” she explained. “We usually also do a biggest mover prize and that’s the biggest jump from Saturday to Sunday so it kind of gives you, if you’re in the bottom of the pack, it gives you something to work towards and … we’ve had some pretty impressive people that have moved up like 12 spots or something like that.”
To date the race has raised $697,000 for the Children’s Foundation of Guelph and Wellington.
This year’s race has three teams from Wellington County: Jake Drexler from Elora, and Paul Harrington from Rockwood; Tim Anderson and Kylie Van Horne from Elora; and Michael Domingues and Mike Santos from Elora.
Drexler and Harrington were the top fundraisers and overall winners of the SOAR in 2014. According to the team’s page on the SOAR website, Drexler works on various construction jobs including reconstruction of roads and sewers, bridges and sidewalks and landscaping. The best part of his job is being outside every day. Drexler’s super power would be Spiderman’s power. Harrington is a firefighter and every day is different. The best part of his job is when someone needs help they do their best to help them. He said his super power would be the ability to read minds. The team said they hope to be accepted onto the Amazing Race Canada.
Anderson and Van Horne will be competing for their second year. Their team page says Anderson is a renovation and construction guy and the best thing about his job is that it’s different from day to day. If he could have a super power it would be to fly. Van Horne is a dog walker, pet sitter and urban farmer. She has plots throughout Elora where she grows vegetables. If she could have a super power it would be healing powers. Last year the team finished in the middle of the pack during the race, they hope to place higher this year.
Domingues and Santos say they are ready for the adventures and challenges of SOAR on their team page. Domingues is the vice president of marketing for Woolwich Dairy. He works with retailers across North America to increase goat cheese awareness. His super power would be flying. Santos is master scheduler at Woolwich Dairy. He schedules all of the milk delivery and allocations; cheese making processes and final production packaging. His super power would be mind reading.
