Defending champions check in

With only a couple of days remaining before the cannon sounds to start the 2006 XTERRA Saipan Championship along the shores of Micro Beach, scores of triathletes seeking the ultimate adventure have begun to descend upon the CNMI to ready for this weekend’s challenge—including defending champions Olivier Marceau and Renata Bucher.

The Swiss duo swept last year’s off-road challenge with remarkable times of 2:33:47 and 2:51:40 respectively, and continued their success a week later as Marceau won the Tagaman Triathlon with the only sub-three hour time (2:57:44), while Bucher was the second female finisher overall with a time of 3:22:31.

As a result of posting the lowest combined times in the back-to-back challenges, both earned return trips to Saipan by winning the PIC Double. Now they plan on enjoying ideal race conditions that the CNMI has to offer when they don their swim caps and goggles this Saturday, April 1, for the 8am start.

“It’s always a pleasure for us to come back because Saipan means sun, a warm welcome, and nice people. It’s a beautiful area and we had so much fun two years ago and last year so I didn’t want to miss it this year,” said Marceau.

Marceau is making his third appearance on the local scene after racking up consecutive wins, but Bucher said that she was blown away when she came to Saipan for the first time in 2005.

“This course is just amazing. At first I saw it I thought ‘This is not possible. What am I doing here?” You run in the jungle and sometimes you don’t see anything. I was very surprised. I love this course and last year I had such a good race and such a good time that I had plenty of motivation to come back,” she said.

Marceau had a similar story from his first trip to the CNMI, as the two-time Olympian recounted his memories of the 2004 XTERR Saipan Championship.

“I was very surprised by the difficulty. The swim is very nice in the clear water. The water is very hot so it is very enjoyable, but then I took my bike and I realized that the heat and the humidity, and the climbs—it’s very, very hard. It’s long, and I was suffering a lot. It was raining the week before so it was all muddy. And then the run was the most difficult part of the race because it’s very long too. It’s very slow. You cannot run very fast. You’re running through the jungle, the river, and the caves, but it’s so beautiful. I really enjoy this race, and it was one of the hottest of my life but one of my best too,” said Marceau.

After winning last year, Bucher took off like a shot though the XTERRA ranks as she took the XTERRA titles in Austria, the Czech Republic, and the European Tour before finishing fourth in the World Championships in Maui.

Now she hopes to experience some of the same success this week, but she admits that the pressure is already on to defend her title.

“For me it was a start for such a good year. It was the start of my best year and I hope this year will start the same way. The pressure is already on but I feel good. I gave my best with my training on the Gold Coast, and I’ve invested a lot of time to try to (improve on) the swim. I’ll give my best and you never know what’ll happen this Saturday but I feel good,” she said.

Last year Marceau became the first professional men’s repeat winner, and now he has a chance for the three-peat. Since his plane touched down on Monday morning from Australia’s Gold Coast he has already begun swimming, biking, and running the courses for both of the races.

Yesterday he ran north from the Pacific Islands Club to Garapan where he hopped on a mountain bike assembled especially for him by Romey Lanuza at Saipan Bike Pro before cycling back to the San Antonio hotspot to get ready for the 30-km bike course with Bucher.

If the course remains as dry as it has been for the past week, Marceau has a shot at improving upon his best time of 2:33:20 from two years ago. Despite slippery conditions, Marceau set course records on the bike by two minutes (1:19:29).