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Ch-ch-ch-changes
The XTERRA season ends
with a bang
By Monique Cole
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From
the firm establishment of a new guard in off-road triathlon to
the celebration of new parenthood, change was in the hot dry
air of Wailea, Maui, at the 2001 XTERRA World Championships on
October 14.
Two South Africans won the race here
with two Californians finishing second. Conrad Stoltz took the
men's title in two hours, 28 minutes, 48 seconds, while spectators
waited a long eight minutes for Kerry Classen to cross the finish
line next. And Anke Erlank (3:00:59) had an even bigger lead
- nearly 11 minutes - over second-place woman Cheri Touchette.
After crossing the finish line, Touchette
wished her two-year-old daughter a happy birthday. There were
plenty of other babies and toddlers cheering parents from the
sidelines, including the 8-month old daughter of 1999 women's
champion Shari Kain.
Stoltz, on the other hand, had a new
baby of a different type. Before the race, he was obviously excited
about his spanking new ride - a dual-suspension Specialized M5
that was part of a sponsorship deal he had landed just a week
prior. All season he had been racing on borrowed bikes, so he
hoped the M5 would help on the unfamiliar course.
The 30k mountain bike leg is the deciding
factor in this triathlon, which starts with a 1.5k open-water
swim and ends with an 11k run. "You can lose it on the run,"
said one racer. "But you gotta win it on the bike."
Because the bike course is on private
land, first-timers don't see it until race day. Awaiting them
is a total of 3,000 feet of climbing on hot, dusty ranch roads
strewn with sharp lava rocks. Plentiful kiawe trees, relatives
of the mesquite, provide little shade, but lots of sharp, ruthless
thorns that can slash tires like razor blades.
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photo ©Phil Mislinski
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Apparently, Stoltz's tubeless tires
defended with Slime held up. "I just took off on the downhills,"
the ecstatic champion said. "I did stuff I never thought
I could do."
Averaging 12.76 mph on his new bike,
Stoltz quickly took the lead despite being 11th out of the water.
As expected, it was John Flanagan, a Hawaii lifeguard, swim coach
and champion ocean swimmer who had the fastest swim time - 18
minutes, 19 seconds. But also as expected, he couldn't keep up
with the pros at his first triathlon. He finished 177th overall
out of the 385 athletes who registered.
By the time the run rolled around, no
one could close in on Stoltz. At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney
the 26-year-old raced on roads with the South African triathlon
team. But his transition to trails was smooth.
Stoltz grew up in a ranch house in the
South African interior with no electricity and no paved roads
anywhere nearby. "My Dad's a cattle rancher, he made me
run after the cows all the time," he said. "I'm used
to jumping over stuff."
Fellow racer Cameron Widoff compared
the run to a limbo contest, thanks to numerous tree branches
that littered the course. When runners weren't dodging trees,
they were slogging through soft sand, scrambling over lava rocks
in a section dubbed "Hell," and making time on the
pavement which made up half of the run.
Widoff won the men's "Double"
purse of $2,500 for the fastest combined times at the XTERRA
World Championships and the 2001 Ironman Hawaii, held a week
prior on the Big Island. Widoff placed eighth at the Ironman
and entered his first XTERRA on a lark, but he promised it wouldn't
be his last venture off-road. "I'm hooked," he said,
putting his finger into his cheek like a marlin on a line.
The Maui race attracts a strong field,
thanks in part to its proximity to the biggie of triathlons,
the Ironman Hawaii. A total purse of $105,000 didn't hurt. There
was plenty of talk about what racers would do with their prize
money. "It'll buy a lot of diapers," Classen said about
his $10,000 second-place winnings and his one-month-old baby.
Erlank, who also won the US National
Championships in Lake Tahoe in September, as well as the point
series, gathered $39,400 for the year. "In South Africa
with all that money you could almost buy a house," she said,
adding, "This is so much fun, I would've done it for free."
Some may wonder where last year's champions
were. In the women's race, the 2000 champion Kerstin Weule settled
for third place in 3:12:37.
For 2000 men's champion Michael Tobin,
Maui was just a stop-over, both figuratively and literally. That
evening he would be flying to New Zealand to race the Eco-Challenge
with the returning champion team Eco-Internet. Tobin had made
his debut in multi-day adventure racing with Eco-Internet in
September at the Discovery Channel World Championships in the
Swiss Alps (see Page TK).
Before the XTERRA race, Tobin said that
2001 would be his last year as a pro triathlete.
"To do the long [adventure races] takes so much out of you,
by the time you've recovered you've lost the sharpness you need
to be a triathlete." Other racers thought Tobin was just
sand-bagging, but he backed up his claims with a modest 28th
place finish.
Triathletes switching to adventure racing,
champions becoming parents, roadies hitting the trails - despite
all the changes witnessed on Maui, one thing remained constant.
Ned Overend, a mountain bike legend and long-time XTERRA veteran,
once again finished in the lead pack. The forever young athlete
placed fourth at the age of 46.
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