Cardy is real deal as King is crowned in Portsmouth duathlon

A rapid first leg from City of Portsmouth runner Cardy saw him break clear of the field.

Neil Collins, from Southsea, led the chasing pack and closed a bit on the bike leg.

But Cardy stretched out again on the second run to take a brilliant victory with a time of 1hr 14min 09sec.

His splits were 24.51 for the opening 7.5k run, 31.00 for the 18.5k bike leg and 17.17 for the closing 5k run.

King was second female in the first race of the series last month but this time she went one better as she recorded a time of 1.28.27.

She did the first run in a time of 31.31, then 34.36 for the cycle and 21.19 for the second run.

Kelly Stokes finished second in 1.30.20, while defending champion Emma Jolley was third in 1.30.34 and Becky Neal took fourth place in 1.32.23.

For Cardy, who is from Portsmouth, it was an excellent race and while he is still quite new to duathlon events he is clearly adapting well to the challenge.

He said: ‘I’ve been getting into cycling over the past couple of years, with cycling to work.

‘I’ve done a couple of other duathlons, I did the Gosport one last year.

‘This is only my third one.

‘My running helps. I have seen the times Neil Collins has done and how he has done over the series in the past couple of years.

‘So I thought I needed to get a good lead on the run because I expected him to come past me on the bike.

‘But I somehow managed to hold him off.

‘It was a really nice day for it, I really enjoyed it.

‘This is a good course and there is a lot of support from everyone, including the other competitors.’

Cardy missed the opening race but he is planning to do race three of the series hosted by Rob Piggott and his Believe & Achieve events team.

Collins finished second on Sunday in 1.15.59, with Patryk Huczkowski third (1.17.46), Adam Mitchell fourth (1.18.05) and Piotr Meller fifth (1.18.42),

Collins, who won race one and finished second in race two, will miss the finale because he is competing in the triathlon World Championships qualification race at St Neots.

He said: ‘Paul went off really strongly on the first run.

‘You never know at the beginning what sort of pace you are doing and I just thought there is no way I can maintain that, so I just set my own pace.

‘I had Patryk and Piotr with me so I knew we were running about the right pace.

‘Unfortunately, I’ll miss the third race when I’m competing in a qualifier for the worlds up at St Neots.’

The duathlon series finale takes place on Sunday, May 8 at Speakers Corner, Clarence Esplanade.