Coddens, Erbenova win XTERRA Belgium

Press Release / 14.06.2016

Kris Coddens and Helena Erbenova captured the inaugural XTERRA Belgium elite titles in Namur last weekend.

The swim was cancelled due to the extraordinarily high water levels in the Meuse River and turned into a run-bike-run event instead.  XTERRA World Tour managing director Dave Nicholas was on-site for the event and brings us this report…

A superb day for racing in Belgium.  Low 70's with clouds and a slight breeze made it easy on the athletes to conquer a very difficult course.  Because of the heavy rains in France, the current in the Meuse River made the swim impossible and it became a run-bike-run, but not exactly duathlon distances.   Just over 650 athletes made a heavy jam of bodies running on the road around the compound before heading into the woods.  It was wonderful, it was chaos and everyone survived.

The first run was just over 4K.  Straight out onto the bike it was local favorite Kris Coddens shadowed by Kiwi Sam Osborne. "I wanted to be sure to lead on the bike and went very hard on the first climb" said Coddens. "I figured soon it was too fast and backed down to save some energy.  In a moment, Sam was with me and I had to go again."

Indeed, those two ran away from the field right from the start.  Damien Guillemet, Francois Carloni and Nicolas Fernandez were all together but already two-minutes back at the end of the first bike lap.  Namur is one of those trail systems where it just seems that everything goes up and very little comes down so it is easy to run out of energy early.  The other local favorite, Yeray Luxem clearly had problems and was mired back over five minutes at the end of the first bike lap.  You have to give him credit as he never bowed out, never quit and ended up an amazing 14th.

It's well known that Helena Erbenova is not a great swimmer.  Equally well known is she can run.  The layout this weekend suited her perfectly and despite cramping on the first bike lap, she came out of the woods to start the second loop already four-minutes ahead.  The surprise was young French star Morgane Riou was up into 2nd followed by Carina Wasle, Maud Golsteyn, Elisabetta Curridori and Luxembourg’s own Isabelle Klein.

Out onto the second lap Coddens and Osborne were still within a few seconds of each other and suddenly Kris showed up almost a minute ahead. "I saw this muddy spot coming up and Kris was being careful," grinned Osborne.  "I decided to go for it, but then thought maybe not and that indecision caught me out.  I started sliding, caught it and then slid some more and had to get off the bike and run up the next hill.  I went hard but I just could not close the gap".

That minute stayed constant and Coddens ran it home to a very loud crowd cheering for their own man. There were spectators everywhere.  It sometimes caught the organizers out as nobody had planned on thousands coming.  We saw people walking up the crazy stairs that took bikers down to transition.  Fans lined the hills, they sat on the medieval walls surrounding the Citadel and they clapped and cheered and tooted horns.  It was great.

Erbenova was dominant today and her cramps went away on the second bike lap and she never looked back, winning by seven-minutes over Wasle.  Morgane was completely exhausted, muddy and a bit bloody but over-the-moon happy.  She was a mess and talked about hitting the mud and falling.  "But I think a lot of people did the same thing" she laughed.

The rain stayed away; the local boy won the race; the location at the top of Namur overlooking the city and the Meuse River and mostly the fantastic Citadel, a huge stone fortress that has guarded Namur for centuries.  We could not have written a better script.

The action returns to Switzerland in a couple weeks.  This race will serve as the ETU cross triathlon championship as well as XTERRA Switzerland and will have just as big an entry in a very different but equally stunning setting.  We're off to the after race dinner, awards and party which has been promised to be awesome.  The Belgians say they are famous for three things - Frites, Beer and Chocolates.  I think that makes for a pretty interesting evening.

Tentative Elite Results

Pro Men     
    
Pl     Name             Points         Time
1     Kris Coddens, BEL     75     2:33:35
2     Sam Osborne, NZL     67     2:34:41
3     Francois Carloni, FRA     61     2:38:10
4     Nicolas Fernandez, FRA     56     2:40:26
5     Damien Guillemet, FRA     51     2:43:04
6     Tomas Kubek, GER     47     2:43:53
7     Sebastian Norberg, SWE     43     2:44:25
8     Henry Sleight, GBR     39     2:45:43
9     Christophe Betard, FRA     36     2:47:07
10     Llewellyn Holmes, GBR     33     2:47:42
11     Fabrizio Bartoli, ITA     30     2:47:47
12     Yeray Luxem, BEL     27     2:48:31
13     Jim Thijs, BEL     25     2:51:28
14     Martial Schmidt, FRA     23     2:56:23
15     Boris Chambon     21     2:58:36
Also: Glenn Wesseling, Lars Van der Eerden, Max Sasserath, Jon Heasman, Joost Christiaans, Thomas Kerner, Jonathan Pybus, Kenny Van Laere, Anthony Verhamme
    
Pro Women     
    
Pl     Name             Points         Time
1     Helena Erbenova, CZE     75     3:01:41
2     Carina Wasle, AUT     67     3:08:56
3     Morgane Riou, FRA     61     3:12:30
4     Isabelle Klein, LUX     56     3:26:41
5     Jessie Roberts, GBR     51     3:27:54
6     Maud Golsteyn, NED     47     3:29:56
7     Elisabetta Curridori, ITA     43     3:36:13
8     Lenka Cibulkova, CZE     39     3:37:39