Business Day

Schoeman and Rabie on track in Stockholm

- MARK ETHERIDGE Mari Rabie

TWO of SA’s Rio Olympics bound triathlete­s posted solid results in the WTS event in Stockholm at the weekend.

Henri Schoeman ended eighth and Mari Rabie ran her way to 14th spot in the women’s race.

Schoeman, who was not feeling 100% due to some sort of bug, had a time of 1hr 52min 22sec, as Alistair Brownlee won in 1:50:33.

Making it a Brownlee 1-2 was brother Jonathan, 10 seconds adrift, while France’s Pierre Le Corre rounded off the podium in 1:51.30.

Meanwhile, Rabie clocked 2:07:08 as Bermuda’s Flora Duffy, who spends a lot of her time in Rabie’s home town of Stellenbos­ch, won in 2:03:38, her first WTS title.

Rabie had race splits of 20:59 for the 1,500m swim, 1:07:13 for the 40km bike, and then a 37:36 10km to wrap things up.

And despite not cracking the top 10, Rabie will take heart from her race-day toil.

“This was probably the race with the worst build up for the year; I was sick until a day before,” she told Road to Rio 2016.

That meant that Team Rabie had to opt for Plan B. “We had a totally different approach. To just do the most with what I had on the day.

“And I think I’ve come a long way if that still gets you 14th in a WTS race.”

This will not be a race that she really factors into her Olympic preparatio­ns.

“I’m not reading anything into this race regarding form or fitness but rather on how well I did the small things (like leading into T2 and running out first).

“So I scored OK with how smart I raced on a sick body,” she said. “It’s just another building block.” Road to Rio 2016

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