XTERRA World Champion at 17: What It Cost Nadia van Wyk
Nadia van Wyk started the bike leg 30th at the XTERRA World Championship in Italy and finished the race carrying the South African flag. Before she was an off-road triathlon world champion, Nadia was a seven-year-old doing parkruns with her dad in Cape Town. On The Active Hobo Podcast she walks us through what came next: a lockdown training loop around the family home, homeschooling so she could train, national titles across XCO mountain biking, road and triathlon, and the friendships that didn’t survive the schedule. She’s honest about the parts most young athletes keep quiet. She used to cry on start lines. A heart inflammation diagnosis cost her six months. She got pulled at her first UCI XCO World Championships, and this year she nearly walked away from racing altogether. Then there’s Molveno, and a finish line she crossed believing she was second.