What a surprising day, conjuring up some famous American cliches like "It ain’t over until the fat lady sings;  don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.  And don’t say who finished where; until they get to the finish line.

 

I was no more than half a K away from the finish as I wrote down how the race was ending, but had some big surprises when I looked at the official results..  more on this as we go with the story.

 

3am on race morning it was raining hard.  At 8:30am race morning it started sprinkling again.  We all thought it was going to be a cold, muddy, wet race.  But the weather Gods came through and with a bit of wind and the sun coming out by 10am we had almost perfect conditions.  Lots of complaints about no wetsuits early on, but the water was 22 degrees C and the rules are the rules.  Because the air temp had risen by 10 degrees since we arrived, there were no big problems with the swim. 

 

No surprise on the swim with Aussie Ben Allen, Scot Rory Downie and the Shaw brothers leading quickly.  There was a twist in the women’s swim with ITU racer Kathrin Muller leading by over a minute on Jacqui Slack.  At the top of the highest climb the first surprise was not that Alex Haas had the lead, but some guy, #268 was second about 10m behind.  I looked on my elite start list and he was not listed.  Who was this guy?  3rd was Asa Shaw followed closely by Sebastian Kienle, Olivier Marceau, Karl Shaw with Nico Lebrun and Yeray Luxem side by side.  We did not see Richard Ussher only to find out he had a crash on the first downhill and was out.  “I was right behind Nico starting the downhill.  He went around a corner and was gone!  I went a little wide and hit a small stump and down I went”.  Ussher got a bad cut, down to the bone, from his chain, but as a tough Kiwi, he had it taped up and one leg rode his bike down the hill to get medical help.

 

So who is 268?  Turns out it was Marvin Gruget.  Just 20 years old but already an XTERRA World Champ in the 15-19 age group.  And his position was no mistake.  He was up front as a 20-24 age grouper.