Ruben Ruzafa and Hele­na Karasko­va win XTERRA Czech

The 33-year-old Spaniard Ruzafa is cur­rent­ly in impres­sive form. Short­ly after win­ning the ITU World Cham­pi­onship on Tues­day, he wins the tech­ni­cal­ly demand­ing XTERRA Czech, and quite impres­sive­ly. Already after the swim split it was obvi­ous that the Spaniard worked a lot on this dis­ci­pline, his gap to the top (Chane and Allen) was rel­a­tive­ly small and it was only a mat­ter of time when he took over the top on the MTB track. This hap­pened after 19 km. The South African and reign­ing XTERRA World­champ Bradley Weiss, Sam Osborne and the strong Czech Kocar, how­ev­er, remained in close con­tact. Osborne had a tech­ni­cal defect and Kocar a crash, which the French­man Max­im Chane could use for him­self and entered T2 in 3rd place. How­ev­er, he could not hold this place. The Czech came back on the trail and fin­ished 3rd after Ruzafa and Weiss. Peter Lehmann (DE) came back among the top ten and was hap­py about 8th place.

As expect­ed, local hero Hele­na Karasko­va (CZ) won the women’s com­pe­ti­tion, but she had to fight. The old cham­pi­on of Euro­pean crosstraathlon, the Swiss Miss Rena­ta Buch­er attacked the favourite espe­cial­ly on the bike course hard and came as the leader in T2, fol­lowed by the New Zealan­der Orchard. Karasko­va was still in 3rd place, but the Czech is a coura­geous run­ner and took the lead in the first lap. How­ev­er, the best run­time – the Aus­tri­an Cari­na Wasle. She was still able to fight her way up to sec­ond place and the New Zealan­der to third place. Rena­ta Buch­er fin­ished 4th.

All in all, a suc­cess­ful com­back for the XTERRA Czech after a break of sev­er­al years. Prachat­ice and sur­round­ings are a great loca­tion for cross-triathlon, the iso­ton­ic cold drinks behind the Fin­ish­line leg­endary 😉

Die Fin­ish­er Liste Elite auf einen Blick

Fotos vom Wet­tkampf (Face­book)

Weit­ere Infor­ma­tio­nen zum XTERRA Czech find­et ihr hier.