A locally-produced documentary about the Grande Cache Canadian Death Race will begin airing on TELUS STORYHIVE on Thursday. A project over a year in the making, Undefeated: Journey To The Death Race showcases not only the mental and physical challenges that come with competing but also the adversities of preparing to attempt the feat.
Project Lead Wade Whibley says he came up with the idea for the documentary on a nine-hour drive from Grande Prairie to Kamloops.
“It really sparked my imagination because I have always been intrigued about why someone would want to do The Death Race; to put their body through that,” he says.
The Death Race itself is a 125 KM Ultramarathon that includes three mountain summits, one major river crossing, and 17,000 feet of elevation change. It is held annually in Grande Cache every August.
According to Producer and local director Andrew Jones, who operates Checkered Owl Media in Grande Prairie, Whibley needed a team to tackle the project, and so reached out for some help. On race day, he says, the team consisted of five crews shooting for 26 hours straight.
“It was a fun challenge. There were four athletes, in particular, we were following and then there was the race at large that we wanted to tell the story of.”
“There were five legs to the race, so we always had a crew at each transition point and then we would also try to run up the trail… or drive up to, [and] we had one guy on a quad so that we could make sure to capture them and as much of the race as we could,” he says.
The final documentary follows Jessica Winnemuller, Yasna Martinez, Phil Troyer, and Krista Mitchell, who are all members of Grande Prairie’s Triple Terrain Trail Trekkers running community.
Undefeated: Journey to the Death Race premieres on Youtube at 7:30 p.m. on November 12th.