A pair of XTERRA stars from South Africa – Bradley Weiss and Carla Van Huyssteen – took the top spots at the inaugural XTERRA Reunion off-road tri in Saint-Gilles today.
It’s the second XTERRA World Tour win of the year for Weiss, who captured the season-opener at XTERRA Philippines in February – and a triumphant return from injury for Van Huyssteen, a two-time XTERRA South Africa Champ. Both will now head to Langkawi, Malyasia to compete for next Saturday’s XTERRA Asian Tour Championship.
In the men’s race local triathlon hero David Hauss – winner of the Mooloolaba ITU World Cup earlier this year – was more than one-minute faster than everyone out of the water and also posted the fastest run split of the day but in XTERRA the race is usually won on the mountain bike and that’s where Weiss took over.
Weiss had a race best 1:09:32 bike split and was able to hold off XTERRA Greece Champion Francois Carloni and Yeray Luxem from Belgium on the run to take the tape in 2:17:20.
“Awesome to take another championship win, especially on such a beautiful island,” said Weiss. “This place is fast becoming my favourite event location!”
Weiss said the race was a real battle between himself and Carloni.
“Hauss took an early lead in the swim but once the real climbing started on the bike his lack of mountain biking was evident,” said Weiss. “Myself and Carloni worked well together on the bike and opened up a big lead on third. I was unsure of his running abilities so really wanted to open a gap on the final technical descent into transition. Unfortunately, I took a hard fall and ended up cutting my leg on my pedal. Thankfully I was able to close the gap back up to Carloni before entering T2 and we started the run together. Early on it was clear that he had biked too hard and I was able to slowly open a gap on him. The run was technical but had a few flat faster sections which I was able to take advantage of. With a 1.5km beach run to the finish I was able to back it down and take in the moment. I am unsure how often this will happen so I was determined to enjoy it.”
Luxem ran his way into second and Carloni was able to hold off Hauss for third place. Jan Kubicek of the Czech Republic was 5th, followed by Theo Blignaut (South Africa), Sam Gardner (England) and Simone Calamai (Italy).
1 Bradley Weiss, RSA 2:17:20
2 Yeray Luxem, BEL 2:20:43
3 Francois Carloni, FRA 2:21:37
4 David Hauss, FRA 2:23:12
5 Jan Kubicek, CZE 2:24:42
6 Theo Blignaut, RSA 2:26:31
7 Sam Gardner, GBR 2:29:42
8 Simone Calamai, ITA 2:43:54