Sbonga Shange and Dawid Janse van Rensburg both bagged bronze medals at the recent World Duathlon Championships in Odense, Denmark, writes MARK ETHERIDGE.
Shange took third spot in the sprint distance and Janse van Resnburg in the standard distance. Standard distance for the two-code event is a 10 kilometre run, 40km cycle and 5km run whereas the hotly contested sprint distance is raced over 5/20/2.5km.
With no official team manager making the trip, Hylton Belitzky took it upon himself to help manage Shange on his first overseas racing experience.
‘Sbonga raced in the 25-29 age category and managed a sixth place in his age group. He was bitterly disappointed as he was aiming for a podium position as this was his first time overseas and also his first time representing South Africa at an international event. The course was flat but hard, and the wind picked up on the cycle leg.
‘In the sprint championships the guys went off at a blistering pace, the cycle was very fast and positions were starting to get settled.
‘The bronze medal was decided on the last run, with two kilometres to go Sbonga knew that if he wanted it, he would have to dig deeper than he ever has before and boy, oh boy did he, he finished third to take home a bronze medal. All in all, it was a great event and well organised in a beautiful city with friendly people.’
Twenty-five-year-old Shange is a sports coach at Merchiston Preparatory School in Pietermaritzburg, and he was helped to fine tune for world championships by former national triathlete Glen Gore, also from KwaZulu-Natal.
Shange told Team SA. ‘In October 2017, I found out I was selected to compete at 2018 duathlon world champs 25-29 AG.
‘I was bitterly disappointed at my sixth place in the the standard race – it was hard and I was on my limits for the two hours of the race. Knowing that I had done my best gave me some joy.
Thank God for the people around me because they made me realise that I had done well so I could sleep better and prepare for the next race.’
Moving on to the sprint distance and Shange was still feeling the effects of the standard distance. ‘The plan was to do this race for fun as we knew I would be extremely tired after the first race but now I wanted to do something special for the team (my country, sponsors, family and friends).
‘The gun went and I was already on the the limits (I made sure not to look at my heart rate). A few guys pulled away after the first run but they were in sight so I kept fighting. Going into the last run No1 and No2 had pulled away and I was fighting for third with another guy.
‘I just thought “you have to want it more’” and I went, putting almost a minute on him in 2.5km. I kept fighting for a better position but could not get to the first and second guys. This time I felt better with getting on the podium. For those who like numbers, I had an average heart rate of 190 beats per minute and a maximum of 201 bpm over the 1hr 30sec.
‘I feel like we haven’t even started because we are capable of doing more.’
Gore was full of praise for Shange. ‘He’s a super talented athlete, I’ve seen him around for a while and been checking his progress over the last two years.
‘He only had about five or six weeks with me so I took what he had done already and tweaked the programme to try and get him into shape for worlds. He came to a session or two with me (does his training in PMB) while we are based in Durban. This guy is no development athlete – he has proper talent – can run like the wind and his biking is very strong – I haven’t seen a guy like this for a long while.
‘Duathlon isn’t a very big sport in SA so the plan is to work on his swim game – from the times he has sent me, he will need to work hard to up that part of his game – the bike and run are first class – really good – so we’ll have a sit down with him and see how far we can take him in the triathlon world. Probably start short distance and who knows, maybe when he gets older, he can do Ironman distance.’
Photo: Shange and his medal, by Hylton Belitzky