Cuyler Gabriel made it three for three on Thursday evening, capitalizing on an early lead in the run to take yet another title in the Semana Nautica 5-mile biathlon at East Beach.
Once he hit the water, no one was going to catch the former Santa Barbara High swimming standout, who finished comfortably in first place with a time of 46 minutes and 9 seconds.
“I’ve done this race the past two years now and it’s really special to me,” Gabriel said. “I always enjoy the challenge and today, the swim was definitely the most difficult part because of the wind waves.”
After jumping out to quick lead in the 4-mile run, Gabriel never looked back while extending his advantage in the water with a quick sprint past the first buoy. Overall, the Cornell College sophomore finished nearly four minutes ahead of the next racer.
In order to improve his running for triathlons, he competed in both track and cross country during the school year. The 18-year-old added that his goal is to finish within the top five of his age group at the USA Triathlon National Championships in August.
“Now that I have that experience under my belt, I’ve been running consistently,” Gabriel noted. “My main focus for the summer is on training for triathlons because that’s what I want to do professional after college.”
Coming in as runner-up was Stepan Paul, who completed the challenging course with a time of 50:55. Steven Hunt took third in 52:46 while Greg Peterson finished fourth at 57:37.
Becky Smith won her third women’s title with an overall time of 1:01, fifth best overall. Cindy Abrami (1:05) and Chrissy Faulding (1:06) were the second and third women’s finishers, respectively.
“I’ve won this race a few times before but it was nice to get that victory again considering I just had a baby four months ago,” Smith said.
Following her completion of the run, Smith trailed Abrami by roughly two minutes heading into her first ocean swim since her pregnancy. With a strong stroke throughout, the former collegiate swimmer was able overtake her main competition en route to victory.
When asked for the race strategy, Smith replied: “If I had exerted a lot of energy in the run, it would have been hard to get my arms moving in the ocean. With this in mind, I helped myself during the swim by taking it easy on the run.”
Overall, the 4-mile run and 1-mile ocean swim had 12 finishers on Thursday evening.
— Noozhawk sports reporter Blake DeVine can be reached at bdevine@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports and @noozhawk. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.