Thomas unbeatable against the Beast
The cold early morning conditions added to the pain.
Thomas van Tonder (Jeep Team) continued his unrelenting domination over The Beast OCR (obstacle course racing) Challenge, winning Race 4 of the series at The Wedge in Muldersdrift.
Thomas, competing in the toughest race of the day, the Elite Savage Beast (a 15km trail run and 55 obstacles), so far has won all four of the Beast Obstacle Course Racing events.
On Saturday 9 April, Thomas set a blistering pace from the start and crossed the finish line in a time of one hour and 29 minutes, over six minutes ahead of second-placed Marius Smith (OCT South) in 1:36:01 with Bradley Claase (Team Battlerush) in third place in 1:37:45 and Jay Jay Deysel (Jeep Team) fourth in 1:41:49.
The cold early morning conditions added to the pain the elites endured throughout the course, considered to be the toughest so far. The race had the highest number of obstacles of any OCR event in South Africa, many of which were highly technical, upper-body strength challenges.
The first obstacle was a steep slope into a cold stretch of water, closely followed by the ‘Chandelier’, a 20m long obstacle of chained hanging tyres over water. The cold, slippery metal chains proved treacherous for many.
The decider on the day was the final obstacle, number 55, which hit many tired athletes hard after the gruelling 54 obstacles over 15km of trail running. This one was an extreme test of upper-body strength and grip, combining monkey bars, body twisters and weavers, gum-pole shuffles, inverted cargo nets and cliff hangers strung out over 20 metres.
Only seven elites (six males and one female) were able to complete this obstacle, one of whom was Savage Beast female winner, Michelle Meyer, who also was the only official female finisher.
Read more:
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