This was the best feeling I ever experienced in the world of triathlon; standing on the podium while my national anthem played, I was a proud man day today. I knew that with enough training and hard work, all still needed was time to bring where I want to be....

After lots of travel I arrived in Tabor 3days before the event, as always, I won’t train when feeling tired so all I did was getting info, TV and sleeping. After that I went to train, but the weather left me no choice and I had to train whenever I got a chance. I love being in other countries, riding on new roads, running in these awesomely wonderful trail and swimming in either these world class pools or open water. I always feel stressed about where, when and how, but after day 1, everything goes so much better.

When race day arrived, it was so warm and I tried everything to stay cool and not dehydrated or overheat before the race even started. I stayed in the shade until I heard the word go, and that was a false start, we went all out for about 60sec until they managed to stop us, so at least it was a good warm up. When the actual GO went, I went as hard as I could for the swim, but they managed to stay with me and 6 athletes got out together and worked well on the bike, chase pack worked really hard, but couldn’t close the gap. After a hard bike, I started running with sore and tired legs and the 1st of 3 laps was really slow, but I managed to stay with the leading runners, after getting my legs I started picking up speed and kept on

increasing the pace until the end. It was such an awesome feeling passing through the finish line first; I kept the thought of “I can do this, just have some faith in yourself” from the start to end.

What’s up ahead for me: really long travels back to Namibia now to meet the rest of the Namibian Youth Olympic Team and travel to Singapore to race on the 16th, then back to Namibia with the Team and the next day all the way back to Budapest to train and prepare for Junior World Champs. Hopefully then some rest before the South African racings season starts.