Colorado’s best off-road triathletes dominated the Xterra USA Championships on the northern shore of Lake Tahoe in Nevada on Oct. 1. The course is considered one of the country’s toughest off-road triathlons, with a 1-mile swim in Lake Tahoe, a 20-mile mountain-bike ride climbing 2,500 feet and a 6.2-mile trail run.
Half of the top 10 pro men racers in the grueling off-road triathlon hail from Colorado, including national champion Seth Wealing, 27, of Boulder.
Wealing’s winning time of 2:34:41 edged Canadian defending champion Mike Vine by 1 minute, 5 seconds to become the first American to win an Xterra USA championship. Wealing finished at the top of the point tally for the six-stop Xterra U.S. Pro Series, earning $14,000 for the series win and $5,000 for the Lake Tahoe national title race.
In the women’s pro race, Canadian Melanie McQuaid broke Californian Jamie Whitmore’s four-year winning streak. Four Colorado athletes finished among the top 10 professional women.
Suzie Snyder of Colorado Springs took her third amateur national title with a time of 3:28:42, enough to win the amateur women’s 20-24 age group. Denver’s Elizabeth Vollmer, recovering from a broken arm, won her first Xterra title with a win in the amateur women’s 25-29 age group. Cody Waite of Denver won the amateur men’s title for the 25-29 age group (2:52:18).
SKIING: Four-time champion Marolt races into CU Hall of Fame
Bill Marolt, a four-time NCAA champion and 1967 University of Colorado graduate, is among a lengthy list of skiers to be inducted into the CU Sports Hall of Fame on Thursday night.
Joining the 1964 Olympian and 10-year president and CEO of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association is the Buffs’ 1959 ski team – CU’s first national champions – including former Olympic cross country skier Bob Gray and coach Bob Beattie, the first full-time coach of the U.S. Ski Team.
Marolt coached CU to seven consecutive NCAA skiing titles (1972-78) before joining the USSA as alpine skiing director during the record five-medal Olympic performance of 1984, then returning to CU as athletic director later that year. After 12 years, he returned to the USSA in 1996.
Other inductees are Bill McCartney, CU’s winningest football coach; 1969 All-America running back Bobby Anderson; four-time NCAA track champion Adam Goucher; and the late Fred Ca- sotti, CU’s longtime sports information director.
ADVENTURE RACING: Xstream event even tougher because of rough weather
A long, four-stop summer adventure racing season culminated in a seemingly longer weekend expedition race for competitors in the Durango- based Adventure Xstream Adventure Race Series as the so-called “storm of the century” coincided with the canyonlands competition and forced event organizers to scramble alongside racers to keep the event afloat.
According to reports from last weekend’s Moab Xstream Expedition race in Utah, torrential downpours and flash flooding won out over the field of 34 teams competing in what originally was billed as a midlength expedition race, causing the course to be drastically reconfigured after roads, trails and boat ramps were covered in water Friday night and early Saturday morning. Weather prevented teams from accessing more than a third of the 30 planned checkpoints on the course.
By 2:45 a.m. Saturday, however, Team Bagelworks became the first team redirected to the finish line at Red Cliffs Lodge on the Colorado River. Team captain Andrew Hamilton called the weather-plagued race the most difficult 30-hour race he’d ever done. Hamilton was joined in the anti-climactic finish by teammates Matt Hannon, Joelle Vaught and Kyle Peter. Second place was awarded to Team GoLite/Timberland Sprint.
(COMPILED BY STAFF WRITERS JASON BLEVINS AND SCOTT WILLOUGHBY)
