Just like last year, Christine Jeffrey is off to a great start in 2007. Jeffrey, who lives in Tempe, Arizona, won a Continental Cup race in Villarica, Chile, yesterday earning valuable ITU points in the process.
Jeffrey won the race in a time of 2:02:24 – 62 seconds ahead of silver medalist Barbara Riveros (Chile).
Jeffrey’s win, in the second ITU event of this young season, was never in doubt as she came out of the water first, 25 seconds ahead of Amanda Stevens (USA), Anais Moniz (POR) and Melissa Rios (PUR), and 90 seconds ahead of the remainder of the field.
Moniz and Jeffrey hit the second transition a full 3 minutes ahead of the 16 other competitors. However, during the run, Jeffrey, with the third best run of the day (36:58), pulled away from Moniz (38:00) and never looked back en route to her first ITU elite win since she won a race in Ixtapa in 2005.
Jeffrey, who finished 5th at the 2006 ITU Salinas Pan American Cup race in Ecuador last February, hopes to build on her first win in nearly 2 years as she prepares for a busy schedule in 2007.
High Performance Director, Tom Patrick, says it’s a great way to start the 2007 race season. “It’s always impressive when a Canadian athlete achieves a podium performance in an international race. Hopefully, this will be the start of a great year for our elite Canadian athletes.”
Andre-Paul Baillargeon Smith, a 2007 Development team member, finished in 13th place in 1:49:59 – 93 seconds behind overall winner David Castro (Spain).
Complete results: Men, Women.
Triathlon Canada is the National Federation for the Sport of Triathlon and Duathlon in Canada.
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