By Mark Etheridge
Saturday’s Discovery Triathlon World Cup sprint event at the Cape Town Waterfront will be missing both elite South African women Rio Olympians.
Mari Rabie, who ended up just outside the top 10 in Rio last year, has swopped sport for a business career.
And her Team SA countrywoman, Gillian Sanders, is away in Spain.
Sanders, who was 39th in last year’s Cape Town event held over the Olympic distances, explained from Spain: ‘Very sadly, I won’t be racing and I’m gutted not to be there. We only got told last week that we would have a bit of funding for the race but I had already booked a training camp in Spain.
‘I come out here this time every year to get in some great base miles. The cycling is amazing, traffic-free roads and you can go for miles and not see another soul, so I love training here.
‘It’s a super early race in the season so sadly it would’ve been a lot of travel/money to just come and do a training/pre-season race.
‘I’m going to have serious fear-of-missing-out now that I’m not there because there’s really nothing like racing on home soil.
‘However the goal is to qualify for next year’s Commonwealth Games [in Gold Coast, Australia] so I need to prepare as best possible to do that.’
In pursuit of that goal, Sanders’ first race will be in Abu Dhabi, a World Triathlon Series event, on 3 March.