Duffy finds her passion at Xterra’s title race

Flora Duffy’s first experience at the Xterra World Championship on Maui, she said chuckling at the vivid 2013 memory, “was a complete struggle.”

And, she couldn’t wait to return the next year.

Despite the tribulations of that debut, in which she finished third and developed a healthy respect for the quest, Duffy said, “It was like ‘wow, that was pretty awesome!’ I wanted to figure out how I could win here one day.”

Since then the 30-year old Bermuda native has slogged through mud, withstood broiling sun and battled high humidity — sometimes all on the same day — and finished with torn pants. But she has marked the event on her calendar and embraced the annual challenge. “Every year I come here it is completely different,” she said.

Well, except for the common thread that, from 2014 on, she has won the event each year and Sunday bids to become the first to procure four consecutive titles.

The 22nd renewal of the premier off-road triathlon involves a 20-mile bike ride up and down the West Maui Mountains, a 6.5-mile trail run over a 2,880-foot rise in elevation and 0.93-mile ocean swim.

Julie Dibens (2007-09) won the women’s portion of the event three years in a row and Conrad “Caveman” Stoltz (2001, ‘02, ‘07 and ‘10) captured the men’s race four times before retiring. But nobody has managed to master it in succession the way Duffy is attempting.

After the self-described, “eye-opening” rigors of her first Xterra, the challenge is a large part of what keeps her coming back with her fiancee Dan Hugo, a veteran of Xterra competitions, coaching her.

“It is always challenging and you don’t know what the conditions are going to be like. It always keeps you on your toes,” Duffy said.

But, then, Duffy runs at full speed toward challenges and has since age 7, when she first took up youth triathlons in Bermuda and it carried over to prep school and college.

In time she came to see potential in it as a career. “I just loved the sport and thought it would be cool to do it as your job,” Duffy said. Besides, she added, “I don’t have to sit in an office from 9 to 5. You know your job is 24/7 but you get to see the world and meet a lot of people, so it is pretty cool.”

Now, she operates on the theory of the more the better. In addition to the off-road Xterra world titles, she’s been No. 1 on the on-road ITU World Triathlon Series and been a winner on the cross triathlon circuit and three-time Olympian.

Just this year she has won triathlons in Yokohama, Leeds, Hamburg, Stockholm and Rotterdam and finished second at Montreal.

The next goal — a lot of what propels her to cycle an average of 155 miles, run 43 miles and swim 16 miles a week in training — is pursuit of a medal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

In the meantime, there are more Xterras. “With on-road racing you pretty much know what you are going to get, where in (Xterra) there is more adventure and more of the element of the unknown,” Duffy said.

“On Maui,” she said, “you can have a really big swell in the ocean. Then you can have dry conditions or, climbing part of the way up course, have wet conditions.

“I look forward to coming out to Maui every year and racing. Since it is on Maui it is beautiful, the race is a unique experience and it is also a big draw that I can spend a week here.”

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.