Wednesday morning on the San Antonio coast saw the first off-road action of the 2023 World Triathlon Multisport Championships Ibiza, and a beautiful, taxing cross duathlon course conquered in some style by Belgium’s Sebastien Carabin as last year’s silver medallist took the biggest prize.

The opening 5.8km run looped through streets and woods before the athletes were sent back out onto the gravel and rocks, then a two-lap 20km bike into the hills combined tarmac climbs with rock-strewn ascents and switchback descents between the pines, the course ending with a 2.5km run to the tape along the San Antonio harbour.

After that dry and dusty first lap came to an end under the baking sun and picking through the rocks of the coastline, it was Denmark’s Jens Emil Sloth Nielsen with Thibaut de Smet on his shoulder, Sergio Correa Gonzalez and Sebastien Carabin tucked in behind.

Austria’s Andreas Silberbauer was ten seconds back, Jens-Michael Gossauer five more, Italian Giuseppe Lamastra already 80 seconds off the front but heading into transition with his preferred test of two gruelling bike laps ahead.

Mountain bike specialist Carabin was forced to stop and get a piece of tree out of his wheel leaving Sloth able to pull clear on the route up into the forest and the Belgian found himself having to push even more pace to try and make up ground.

The switchbacks through the pine trees saw Carabin close the gap marginally and by the time they were out of the trees and heading towards transition he had drawn level with Sloth at the halfway point of the bike.

De Smet had dropped off and Alessandro Saravelle was into third place with Correa, Austria’s Silberbauer still right in contention, but up front it had become a battle between last year’s silver medallist and Sloth, Saravelle looking to keep the marauding Lamastra at bay.

Once he had forced a gap on the final technical climb, the race was in Carabin’s hands. Suddenly there was 30 seconds gap to Sloth and with the two evenly matched on foot, there was nothing the Dane could do over the technical final run to haul it back.

Carabin came down the blue carpet to take the tape by 23 seconds from Sloth, Saravalle crossing for bronze with a minute to spare to Silberbauer, Giuseppe Lamastra rounding out the top five.

“It was very fast, the tempo was high from the start and I just tried to keep in touch with the leader,” admitted Carabin, “At 3km on the bike I got a piece of tree in my wheel and had to stop and take it out so that lost me 25 seconds, and I had to push to come back, and on the second lap just attack on every climb. On the technical part on lap two I made a gap and then just kept pushing to transition. Coming out I was exhausted but just wanted to keep the pace, I knew we were similar-strength runners, so I had no time to waste. It is the technical mountain bike part where I think I’m one of the best in the world and where I could push and make the gap.”