New Zealand’s The Revenant, a tandem kayak team, will be chasing Yukon Quest glory for the first time.

Ben Lott, 32, and Scott Worthington, 64, both hail from the Central Otago region of New Zealand.

They finished eighth in the 2022 Yukon 1000. It’s a race from Whitehorse to Dalton Highway Bridge, Alaska.

“We loved every day of it,” said Lott. “There’s something about being out on the river for six days and however long. We could have possibly just kept going for another few weeks and been really quite happy.

“It was a long time coming for us, having been locked down here for so long. It was our first trip out of the country, away, and the northern hemisphere hadn’t floated off.”

“It probably paid off for us in the long run. I personally had a lot longer to be a lot stronger.

“But as well we know each other so well when we’ve had the time to do a heap more missions together that we fall into routines now that we don’t even talk about.”

Worthington added, “We don’t call ourselves paddlers. We do adventure racing, of which paddling is a part, obviously.

“We really enjoyed the race, but we didn’t really race it. And that’s why we’re coming back because we had a few things going on down here that didn’t allow us to race it.”

“We saw people get out at the end of the race and that was the hardest thing they’d ever done, and I’m sure it was for them. It wasn’t for us. We just really thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. And hence, we want to come back for the 2000, which we hear might happen next year.”

“I want to get back on the river,” interjected Lott.

“It was really also to come back and race this thing,” explained Worthington. “And not just plod along. So that’s really the reason to come back. We love the area. Love the river, love adventure. Just want to come back and give this one a real good nudge.”

Worthington doesn’t paddle as much as Lott, who is the stronger paddler.

“I’m probably the paddler of the two of us,” said Lott. “I paddle multiple times a week.

“If it’s got the letter A in front of it, that’s probably got us involved with it. Probably our type of adventure is stashed away in the bush truly miles from anywhere and anything where truly there is no humans around. We like crawling through areas that no one’s ever been before. That’s kind of a bit of us. You know, take a pack, a pack raft on the back, and away you go, get dropped in somewhere in a helicopter and picked up the other end in a plane.”

Worthington said, “We’re lucky that we have an area called Fiordland which is very much like your area, in the sense that this area, the bulk of it, no human’s ever put a footprint, it’s too rugged. And to give you an idea of how rugged, we’ve been on some missions where we moved at 40 metres an hour. And we’re not sitting on our backside during that hour. We’re really pushing to try and make forward progress.”

“Scott’s built to move through the bush. He can fit through every hole that possibly exists,” quipped Lott.

Fiordland is a national park about one and a half times the size of Yellowstone.

“It’s just so rugged, that I don’t think humans could actually build anything in there if they tried. But it’s a perfect place for us,” related Worthington.

He said a lot of people have to spend a lot of time practising and sorting their systems.

“As Ben said, that’s what we do. So that was the easy part.”

Regarding the Yukon, Lott said, “We love the people. We’re really excited to come back. Burnt Toast for breakfast in the mornings. That’s probably one of the things we’ve spoken about the most.”

When asked if their experience in the Yukon 1000 will help them with their Yukon Quest, Lott replied, “100 per cent we’ve gained experience from the 1000. We know what we know and we know what we do well, and it showed us our holes of what we need to work on. So this time around, we’re basically coming in just to race ourselves. But we know now we can push through those bigger, longer days with the change of format. This time, the two bigger days, that actually suits us better. We’re used to pushing through the night. So we’re really excited about that too, to go back to our kind of format of racing.”

Comparing the Quest to the 1000, Lott said, “My spin on this: it’s a whole different race.”

“It’s a pure race,” chimed in Worthington.

“It’s a sprint race,” said Lott. “It still has its own challenges. It still has its own beefy kind of intimidation that could go with it. But you’ve really got to be pushing and you’ve actually got to be not sprinting but you’ve got to be strategic about how you are paddling if you want to try and nudge the top end.”

They don’t plan on racing in the 1000 this year, which is July 14-15. Worthington said he’s heading straight to Greenland after the Quest, which they figure to finish on July 7 or 8.

When asked if they would consider doing the YRQ and the Yukon 1000 back to back, Lott replied, “I definitely would.” Worthington agreed.

“The draw of the possibility of the 2000 going ahead in 2024 is probably the greatest draw card to come back.

Because that will really be awesome, to go the whole length of the river.

“If it didn’t go ahead next year, Ben and I are going to come back and do the 2000 anyway. We’ll just do it by ourselves.”

The fastest time to complete the 2000 – from Whitehorse to the Bering Sea – is about 25 or 26 days.

“Ben and I are like ‘Nah, we can beat that,’” said Worthington. “If you’re gonna say that, you’ve got to actually go and do it. But time will tell.”

As for their goals for the YRQ, Lott said “Go as fast as we can.”

When asked if they have a shot at winning the race, Lott responded, “I don’t want to say that. That’s not how we roll. We’re racing ourselves.”

Worthington added, “I’d be disappointed if we weren’t at the pointy end of the kayaks.”

Lott said, “We will do the best we can and where we finish is where we finish, but we’ve done the prep. We know what we need to do. We’ll do what we’ve got to do, and it’ll be what it’ll be.”

Lott said the best way to accomplish their goals would be to “stick to the plan.”

Worthington added, “We’re used to pushing through, up to 48 hours at a time, before you’ll have a sleep. As Ben said, this sort of race to Carmacks, have 10 hours to stand down, and then race again, is just perfect. That’s a relatively easy timeframe for us. Our plan really revolves around just thinking about that first 24 hours to Carmacks.”

“We split it into two races. It’s a race to Carmacks, then a race to Dawson,” related Lott.

“Then absolutely luxury to have a 10 hours stop,” said Worthington. “And we’ll enjoy that. And then the second race starts, that second 24 hour burst. So it’s really just maximizing that 24 hours. And for me personally, the strategy for that first day, and I’m sure everyone’s got the same, but you just got to get across that lake as quickly as you can, and get back into that flow again.

“Getting across the lake is critical, that 55 (km) is critical, whatever the conditions are, we don’t really care. They’re the same, pretty much, for everybody.

“Your navigation and the lines that you take come into play as much as anything else. And we’ve done a lot of scrutiny on the river.”

Lott said, “We’ve got Heidi (Virtanen) from the Skirtin’ Albertans, who’s done the Quest many, many times, is coming up from Calgary to be our support crew.

“She did the 1000 last year as well in a canoe. She knows the race inside and out. So we’ve basically got a professional coming to crew us, which is really cool.

“It’s nice to be surrounded by people that know the race quite well and try to get the info out of them.”

Lott added, “We’re just really looking forward to honestly getting back up there. It’s really neat.

“Just listen for the loud ones. You’ll probably hear us coming a mile away.”