Julie Dibens is a cool cat. She’s calm, collected, confident and an absolute monster on this Maui Xterra course, Julie Existed the water in second place , making the ground up on the leader within 5mins of riding then Julie – making it look easy, started putting more on more time on her competitors with every turn of the pedal.
By mile 11 she had a four-minute lead and was mixed in with the top 15 men. A few seconds later Brian Smith (one of XTERRA’s all-time fastest men’s mountain bikers) rode by and said “Wow!” – referencing the fact that he was halfway through the bike and Dibens was still in front of him.
At mile 15 Dibens was up by nearly five minutes, it was more than that at transition, and when she finished with a women’s event record time of 2:56:42, the finish line crowd waited another seven-and-a-half minutes before seeing Lesley Paterson. She had the day’s fastest bike split, even better than Marie-Helene Premont (an Olympic silver medalist in the 2004 mountain bike competition in Athens), Shonny Vanlandingham (NORBA’s all-time best) and Melanie McQuaid (a Canadian National Team rider for years).
Dibens is the first pro – man or woman – to win this race three years-in-a-row and joins the exclusive club of three-time winners with Conrad Stoltz, Melanie McQuaid, and Eneko Llanos.
“I felt good all day except for that last stretch of the run on the lava,” said Dibens. “I was able to ride in control and run smart. I’m delighted to be up here on the podium again and to win this race three times in a row is really special.”
In the ultimate display of class, Dibens deflected talking about her own race at the awards ceremony dinner but rather praised Paterson, who she had raced against on the ITU circuit nearly a decade ago, and told the assembled masses that this course was good for her and on any other course Melanie McQuaid could "kick my a#*".
Congratulations Julie, Your a legend!!
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