Mancos is now home to a USA Pentathlon Youth National Championship gold medalist.
Teslin Stecher, 14, took top honors at the elite competition last month. The rigorous Olympic competition features swimming, running, fencing, shooting and horse jumping on a timed, point-based scoring system.
Stecher won first place in the Youth C division for individual male athletes, edging out the runner-up with a nine-point lead. He also took second place in the gender relay of the Youth C division.
"I went to Nationals last year and got fourth. ... A lot of the same athletes were there this year, so I was mostly trying to beat them," Stecher said with a laugh.
To prepare for competition, the young athlete swam three days a week and ran nearly every day. Stecher also trains at home in shooting and fencing, his favorite sport, with his father, Marty Stecher, who is a member of the Durango Fencing Club.
Stecher also swims with the Durango Swim Club, runs with the Mancos and Durango cross-country teams, and trains regularly with the Four Corners Fencing and Pentathlon Club, which is run by former Olympian and his coach Jennifer Thurston.
"I ran every day and was doing a 10-mile loop around town, and also trained a running camp with where we were running 14ers," he said.
Although he now has a first-place national win under his belt, Stecher isn't resting on his laurels. He's actively training and hopes to compete next year in the horse-jumping category.
"It's totally new for me," he said.
Stecher's training partner and three-time national champion Seamus Millet, 16, of Durango, won first place in the Youth A and B divisions for male athletes.
Millet will represent the U.S. this September in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the Pentathlon Youth World Championships, a path that Stecher hopes to explore as he competes more.
"Next year if you're in the top 4, you can go for more international competitions," he said.
For now, however, Stecher's rigorous training and preparation continues, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
Stecher and Millet's wins are putting the Four Corners on the map as a training ground for high-caliber athletes, as their Durango training grounds have recently received heightened interest from pentathletes on the Front Range.
Denise Stecher, Teslin's mother and member of the Four Corners Fencing and Pentathlon Club, says a group from Denver came down to Durango last week for training.
"They're starting to get quite a few of them (out-of-town athletes). You don't always get people down here to train, and I think it's so cool that our little area has produced two national champions," she said.
