Stirling High School pupil Danieke de Kock has been selected to be a South African representative in duathlon at the Pontevedra ITU Standard Distance Duathlon World Championships taking place in Spain in April 2019.
De Kock normally competes in the sprint distance which consists of a 5km run, a 20km bike route and a 2km run.
“I’m really happy to represent my country though it’s quite difficult to get sponsorship,” De Kock said.
De Kock competes in duathlon during the winter season and received an honours cum laude for multisport earlier in 2018.
“I wasn’t really interested when I started. I just did the duathlon as a winter sport, but then I really got into both triathlon and dualthon in 2016,” De Kock said.
She has been competing since 2014, and also excels has talent in triathlon. She recently won first place at the second Tribal Triathlon in the female Olympic distance section.
The Olympic distance is a 1.5km swim, a 40km cycle and a 10km run.
“It was really difficult. The swim was choppy and I doubled the bike distance I normally do, so I had to get used to that,” she said.
De Kock also won the Legends Half Marathon on Sunday in the female division.
This positive young lady hopes to study at the University of Pretoria and do a BEd senior phase.
Her mother, Chanzelle, said she hoped Danieke would she will go grow from strength to strength.
“I’m very proud of what she has achieved since last year when she started concentrating on triathlon. I think she will get even better when training with her coach at Tukkies in 2019.”
