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Stoltz, Bucher win Xterra SO Central Champs

May 23, 2010 (Cameron Park - Waco, Texas) - Conrad Stoltz, 36, from Stellenbosch, South Africa and Renata Bucher, 32, from Lucerne, Switzerland captured the inaugural XTERRA South Central Championship pro titles on a hot and humid day deep in the heart of Texas at Cameron Park in Waco this afternoon.
Nobody on the XTERRA Planet knows how to “Cowboy Up” like Stoltz, and he proved it by crushing the twisty-turny-tree-lined bike course, and walking tall across the finish line with a cowboy hat on in 2:02:21, more than three-minutes ahead of runner-up Josiah Middaugh from Vail, Colorado.

“I had fresh legs today and was just killing it on the bike.  I love this course, and when I came off the bike and someone said I had a four-minute lead I thought to myself maybe we should move the XTERRA World Championship to Waco,” laughed Stoltz to an appreciative local crowd at the finish line.  He posted a 1:05:26 split on the 15-mile bike course, nearly two minutes quicker than Middaugh.
The race started with Christine “Big Fish” Jeffrey leading all racers (men and women) out of the 1.5-kilometer warm water swim in the Brazos River, followed by Branden Rakita, Craig Evans, then Stoltz.

It wasn’t long, however, until Stoltz jumped into the lead on the bike, and then started building on it. Middaugh and Nico Lebrun, who finished the swim two minutes behind Stoltz, caught Rakita at about the halfway point but didn’t get Evans in their sights until the bike-to-run transition.
 “Nico and I stayed together on the bike and I thought we were doing well and making time but Conrad was actually putting time on us,” said Middaugh, the proud father of a 10-day old daughter that he and his wife Ingrid named Larsen (they also have two boys).
When asked how far he was behind Stoltz heading out onto the run, Middaugh replied, “I don’t know, half a day?  Seriously though, someone said it was four minutes, just ridiculous.  I guess if he would’ve stopped and had some barbeque maybe I’d have had a chance.”

Lebrun and Middaugh (pictured) played cat-and-mouse on the run for a bit, before Middaugh (who had the fastest run split for the second straight race) started working the climbs harder.
“Josiah was just too fast for me, he was really strong,” said Lebrun.  “I sat on his legs during the swim, rode behind him most of the bike, and then he dropped me on the run.  He’s really strong, but in this kind of race nobody can beat Conrad.  He’s on another planet on this kind of bike course.”

Stoltz said that a lot of the credit goes to the locals, whose homestay put him up in an airstream “like a rockstar” while Ian Moore of Bicycles Outback in Waco fine tuned his ride on Saturday night before the race.  “Ian has worked with some of the best riders and innovative equipment mountain biking has ever seen and I think he’s probably just one of a handful of guys in the world that could’ve dialed in my bike like he did.”

Evans held on for fourth-place (in nothing but a Speedo!), his best result since finishing 3rd in Alabama two years ago, and the young-gun Ryan DeCook made the podium in the fifth spot for the first time in his career.