Conrad Stoltz, known fondly as “The
Caveman” for his imposing 19-metre frame and super-human sporting achievements,
is our world champion triathlete. He’s won five South African Triathlon titles,
five All Africa Triathlon Championships, and has four off-road XTERRA World
Championship wins. This year Stoltz bagged the inaugural ITU Cross Triathlon
World Championship title, another off-road triathlon race.
He’s also competed in the Olympic Games,
in both Sydney and Athens, and at 37 is racing stronger than ever. He’s
currently in the US powering his way to new records, having just won his 40th
title in the XTERRA series, with a strong chance of achieving his goal of a
fifth XTERRA World Championship title.
Born in Lydenberg in Mupmalanga province
on 23 October 1973, Stoltz grew up near Pretoria. He rode his first bicycle
without training wheels at the age of three, and started racing BMX at seven.
Coming from an athletic family he was also
involved in running track and field events at school, running competitively
from the age of 10.
Stoltz got his first road bike when he was
14 – the same year he competed in his first triathlon, together with his
father, Gert. As a junior athlete, Stoltz was South Africa’s junior dualthlon
and trialthlon champion in 1990 and 1991.
At 18 Stoltz launched his career as a
professional triathlete. He had some impressive wins early in his career, with
five South African and five All Africa titles and raced six seasons for French
clubs Montpelier and Cahors in the mid-1990s.
In 2001 Stoltz’s career took off with a
win in the legendary Chicago Triathlon and taking the XTERRA series World
Championship title in the US. This was his rookie year in the competition, with
no sponsor. He won the race with a 10-minute lead, and successfully defended
his title in 2002.
After setbacks and injuries in 2005 and a
near career-ending crash in 2006, Stoltz reclaimed the XTERRA World
Championship title in 2007 and again in 2010, and has been USA Champion eight
times since his first win in 2001 - only missing the 2004 and 2006 titles.
To balance these highlights, Stotlz has
had his share of lowlights, including mechanical failures, punctures, and race
or pre-race injuries. Not all of these could stop The Caveman. He cut his foot
three minutes before the start of the XTERRA race in Richmond, but still
managed to win the race before being whisked off to hospital to have eight
stitches, and a major operation four days later.
But Stoltz’s worst injury was in 2006 when
a serious crash left him with a broken back and seven breaks in his wrist – one
day before an important competition.
An avid black and white photographer and
flyshisherman, Stolltz recently said that he’d met his match. He didn’t mean
someone who cycled, ran or swam faster than he does; he was announcing his
engagement to Liezel Wium. The happy couple are due to tie the knot on 11
November this year.
Now in his tenth year of racing mostly in
the US, Stoltz is based in Stellenbosch, near Cape Town. He lives on a diet of
potatoes, eating about eight potatoes a day and lots of meat, and spends three
months here in intense training before going over to the US to compete,
spending six months based in the US racing, with a second home base in Bend,
Oregon.
The remaining three months of the year
Stoltz spends with his father, nicknamed Tarzan by Stoltz’s friends, and mother
Liesbeth, on their farm Roodewalshoek in Mpumalanga.
Stoltz says his biggest regret is not
training with a coach earlier in his career. He feels the first seven years he
was either over trained, injured or both and regrets the waste of talent –
something he clearly has an abundance of. Now armed with two decades of
experience and a great coach in South African Ian Rodgers, Stoltz enjoys
mentoring young athletes.
Acclaimed as a popular, down-to-earth and
humble athlete, Stoltz is living up to the meaning of his Germanic surname.
Stoltz means proud – and there’s no doubt that all South Africans can be proud
of this triathlete and ambassador.
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