Race Coverage

Race Coverage

RACE Coverage

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Vladmi dos Santos and Atul Patki - The duo taking on the Namib Desert

Vladmi Virgilio dos Santos is an impressive athlete from Brazil who has significant experience in marathons including Sao Paulo, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Florianopolis, Rio de Janeiro, Trieste, Geneva and Amsterdam and many 50-kilometer races. He has also completed the Atacama Crossing 2013, where he won the Spirit Award, the Sahara Race (Jordan) 2014, the Atacama Crossing 2014, the Gobi March (China) 2015, the Atacama Crossing (Chile) 2017 and The Last Desert (Antarctica) 2018.

Vladmi is a blind competitor from Brazil. Being blind has not kept Vladmi from experiencing the world - he negotiated his way through complicated travel to China in order to join the Gobi March 2015 – travel to Hami is not easy for anyone, and especially not a blind Portuguese speaker!

He last competed with RacingThePlanet in The Last Desert in Antartica 2018 where he joined the exclusive 4 Deserts Club.

As a blind runner, Vladmi must be guided throughout the race; his guide for the Namib Race 2021 is Atul Patki, who is an impressive 4 Deserts Grand Slam member having completed all 4 of the desert race series in 2014.

Atul Patki is originally from India but is now resident in USA. After a break after the 4 Deserts Grand Slam, Atul is back for more at this year’s Namib Race saying, “What I found was unique and made me happy. They run in four different deserts which I had no idea about. Those deserts are in four different places where any human ever had put a foot on. That attracted me to go and explore the uninhabited land and see nature’s beauty from a closer distance rather looking sat the pictures on Google Images.”

Together this inspirational team have made through Stages 1 and 2 and successfully started Stage 3, we look forward to following them throughout the coming days of the race.