The Sunday Mail
Grace Chirumanzu in Nyanga
ZIMBABWE has a bright future in triathlon as evidenced by the impressive perfomance of some of the country’s atheletes during the Schweppes ATU Troutbeck Triathlon Championships here yesterday
Gabrielle Dumont de Chassart and Rupert Anschuetz were outstanding in their races with de Chassart powering through the hilly course to the podium.
The sport, which includes swimming, biking and running, is a great challenge for most young athletes.
The Troutbeck course terrain and altitude did not make it any easier.
However, the junior athletes displayed zeal and perseverance.
De Chassart finished the 750 meter swim, 20km bike and 5km run in 1 hour 16 minutes and 38 seconds, a minute away from silver medalist, South African Gizelde Strauss.
Another South African, Angelique Moller won the race.
De Chassart was impressed with her performance and hopes this is the start to a run that will see her competing at the World Championships.
“I am so happy, especially knowing that in my last two international races I didn’t do so well,” she said.
“I had a long break and came back to training just two months ago and it is nice to see where I am. lt shows that my training has been working.
“I think this is my ideal race and I am happy that some of the top South Africans were here, it is good to race against them. I am happy with the result.
“I was happy with my swim, it is a discipline I can improve on though. I love this course and I enjoyed my cycle and run.
“For this season I would like to go to the S.A Champs, which is in about a month’s time and after that there is World Champs in Mexico. lf I do well in the S.A Champs, hopefully I qualify for that.”
Anschuetz said competing with the South Africans gave him a good measure of where he is.
“I am definitely in a good form but I also saw today that I still can improve quite a bit. After today’s race I have seen that I can compete with the South Africans. Hopefully all goes well,” he said.
Other young athletes who were outstanding include Alexander Colegrave, Gideon Benade, Keith Elliot and Sasha Gemmill.
Meanwhile, Kazakstan’s Ayan Beisenbayev won gold while Germany’s Jonathan Zipf walked away with silver as South African Basson Engelbrecht finished third in the men’s elite race.
In the women’s elite race, Fabienne St Louis from Mauritius won the race ahead of South Africa’s Cindy Schwulst and Carlyn Fischer.
