Taking place in Malta, the World Team Challenge is the ultimate event in the Intelligent Sport World Series – a series of international corporate team-building events organised to create “great teams for business”.

The Intelligent Sport World Series attracts teams from a number of industries including retail, finance, technology, media and consulting.

This year the challenge event saw 30 international corporate teams from Europe and America battle it out in a series of top secret mental, physical and strategic challenges set to test endurance, dynamism, intelligence and core team communication skills – skills which can all be taken back to the workplace.

Sainsbury’s battled in a hard-fought competition to win Best Mixed Team and came third overall behind winners Airbus UK and Lloyds TSB – one of the two all-female teams.

Throughout the competition, each team, consisting of four key members and a substitute, competed in a series of tasks based on the Intelligent Sport concept. Not knowing what each of the five stages of the course involved until the last minute, all the teams, which included Airbus, Lloyds TSB, Dimension Data, Hewlett Packard Spain, Merrill Lynch, Accenture USA and Washington Group International USA, showed their determination to win the challenges, which included strategic navigation, mountain biking, puzzle-solving and construction.

Charles Way from grocery captained the six-strong Sainsbury’s team, which also included fruit buyer Mark Baxter. They embarked on all five challenges without a substitute and put in strong performances against some of the best teams in the world.