Top trail athletes, Pere Aurell and Ragna Debats, will give Saturday’s Otter African Trail (Retto) Run an international flavour, continuing the event’s strong outreach to leading runners from around the world.
Catalan athlete, Aurell, and Dutch-born Debats have excelled at trail running at the highest level over marathon and ultra-marathon distances and on their day both are capable of taking line honours in this prestigious African trail race.
Life partners, Aurell and Debats, together with six-year old daughter Onna and dog Bru, set off on a year-long adventure in December last year, which they’ve branded “The Rolling Mountains World Tour”. The tour includes taking part in a major trail race (plus a special family event including Onna) on each of seven continents, three being part of the Ultra-trail World Tour and several in extreme conditions of heat, cold and drought.
“We wanted to demonstrate how we could best interact and be positive as a family but still perform well at a high level of competition in trail racing,” Debats explained from their campsite at Storms River – the Otter Trail Run headquarters.
Stranded in Costa Rica during the COVID lockdown from March to June, the adventurous family then headed for Africa. “I had been invited back to the Marathon Des Sables in the Sahara Desert after running it last year, but it was cancelled due to COVID,” Debats continued. “So we were going to do the Kilimanjaro Skyrun, ascending to the summit and descending an alternate route, but again we missed out due to COVID confusion.
“We enjoyed an ascent of Mount Meru in Tanzania as our family event, with Onna making it up to 4560m! We then moved to Kenya, where we learnt that the South African borders were opening on 1 October.
“We entered the SkyRun 100km (in Barclay East in mid-November) and then we learnt about the Otter Trail Run from our friends Christian and Landie Greyling, who brought us up to the race. We feel very lucky to have come to South Africa and be in such a special place.”
Debats started her serious running career late in life, after she had promised herself never to again be involved in competitive sport. That followed a successful career as a horse trainer and top-class dressage event rider. “I then went study at Birmingham University in England before finding myself working in a small village in the Catalan region of Spain.
“Everyone was running trails and it seemed to me more like a celebration than competition, so I started taking part. The next I knew the Catalan region had selected me to run for them in a national competition and Pere was part of the team – that’s where we met.”
Pere has a very different personality to me. My competition is with myself, to see what I can achieve, but Pere is very competitive against other athletes and always wants to win. He is feeling strong now, so I’m sure he will be going for a win on Saturday. If my legs find their energy, I’ll give of my best and see how well I can do. If not, I’ll simply just enjoy the scenery and the day out!”
The presence of the Spanish-based couple provides a new dimension to Saturday’s race. Both Debats and Aurell will contend strongly for podium positions and even victory but will be up against powerful competition from South Africa’s top trail athletes.
Johardt van Heerden, Kane Reilly, Mvuyisi Gcogco, Ryan Sandes, Daniel Claassen and Christian Greyling will not lightly surrender the Otter title to Aurell, while world class Toni McCann and Bianca Tarboton could have too much speed for the slightly ‘under-done’ ultra-specialist Debats.
