Mountain biking olympian Philip Buys (Scott) nearly caused a major upset when he took part in his first ever multi sport event at the Momentum Health OatWell DualX Powered by PeptoPro. The second event in the new offroad duathlon series took place at Hakahana Trails near Hartebeespoort dam. It was pre race favourite Brand du Plessis who took the overall win and Velo Life Time Freight’s Lise Olivier who won the overall women’s event.
The icy start did nothing to slow down a determined field and according to du Plessis he knew Buys would be fast on the bike so he pushed hard on the runs. “It actually went a lot better than I expected, I thought I was a bit sick but I felt really good once we got going.” du Plessis commented after crossing the line in first. “This is my type of riding and running, I love the technical stuff” an elated du Plessis added.
Finishing in second place Theo Blignaut (Team Jeep) said “I’m not happy with second but I’ll take it nonetheless. I knew I had to pace myself and when Philip flew past me on the bike I decided not to follow and I caught him on the last run.” He went on to say “It was really a great show by the organisers, I loved the trails”. Blignaut better known for his triathlon prowess rubbed shoulders with Buys at the Absa Cape Epic said “it was awesome to compete with Philip on my turf, these mountain bikers know how to suffer.”
Mountain biking specialist Buys made no bones about being out of his comfort zone on the runs saying “I thought I could at least recover on the bike but that was full throttle as well, I think I hit maximum heart rate a couple of times”. Buys was full of praise for du Plessis and Blignaut and already indicated he will be back at the final event after his obligations with World MTB Championships citing the DualX series as great cross training.
In a reversal of roles the women’s race saw Lise Olivier a professional cyclist on the Velo Life Time Freight squad beat multisport regular Susan Sloan into second place with Nicolette Griffioen topping off the podium. According to Olivier she knew she would make up time on the bike especially because she hadn’t trained running but the technical course suited her. Sloan commented: “I knew Lise would be faster on the bike and coming from a multisport background I should have had the upper hand but I just wasn’t good enough on the day”.
“The third DualX event will take athletes to ACR Roodeplaat and the Buffelsdrift nature reserve where they will experience trails never seen before. We’ve worked very hard on building new exciting trails that have never been used in an event before and this will be real mountain biking and real trail running as athletes have come to expect from the DualX events” commented Fritz Pienaar from Advendurance.
For more info on the Momentum Health OatWell Dual Cross powered by PeptoPro
2014 Event dates:
- #3 6 September – Roodeplaat
- #4 25 October – Van Gaalen
Find us online: www.dualx.co.za
Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/momentumdualx
Find us on twitter: @DualXsa
