The first staging of the event. With no outside entries, the field consisted of 18 brave (foolish) friends who wanted to raise money for charity and decided that this would be a good way to milk as much sponsorship cash as possible out of friends, relatives, workmates and anyone else whose arms could be twisted.
     Such was the success of their arm twisting that the sum of £4,500 was raised for Cystic Fibrosis.
     The winners of the event were Alistair Sutherland and Sally Richards - although the story goes that the times were worked out on the back of an envelope whilst sitting in the back of the pub after the completion.
      Being the first event ever, things were perhaps not as well organised as today. The fact that a cyclist had “disappeared” was only realised after the sweep vehicle arrived at Taynuilt. Heads were counted, names and numbers were checked and the missing person identified. Contact was then made with the various checkpoints along the cycle course to find out where this unfortunate was last seen. The information received and the reports from other cyclists suggested that our errant athlete was not only performing very well from a time aspect but was actually moving up through the rest of the field! He was, in fact, doing so well in his head down - arse up posture that he failed to see the turn off at Taynuilt and was now well on his way to Oban! A pursuit vehicle was despatched and the rogue cyclist returned to the flock. The downside was that he now only had about 10 minutes to get himself organised for the canoe start!
      That man was Bert Wyness. One time oil rig worker, lead singer and saxophonist, last seen based in New York.