Flora Duffy backed up her dominant win in the XTERRA West Championship in Las Vegas a fortnight ago by overcoming a world-class field in the inaugural Asia-Pacific Championship on Saturday in Jervis Bay, New South Wales, a few hours’ south of Sydney.

Duffy outpaced Nicky Samuels, the world champion from New Zealand, who had been unbeaten in three XTERRA races this year, with Jacqui Slack, of England, taking third.

The 26-year-old Bermudian’s joy was made all the more profound because Dan Hugo, her South African boyfriend, was having his way in the men’s professional division.

Duffy, who along with Tyler Butterfield will provide the stardust to Bermuda’s cast of athletes this summer at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, took particular pleasure in beating all but two of the 134 men out of the water at the end of a 1.5-kilometre ocean swim, including boyfriend Hugo. But it was the nine-strong professional women’s field that she was most concerned with, and Samuels emerged from the water in 18min 26sec, two seconds clear of the Bermudian, who now resides in Boulder, Colorado.

Whereas the field never knew which way Duffy went once she stepped out of Lake Las Vegas en route to a crushing 11-minute romp on April 13, she now had a race on her hands departing Jervis Bay in the beachside town of Callala Beach, especially after surrendering an additional five seconds in the first transition.

But, Duffy, whose exploits in the off-road triathlon series since a hugely successful three-month stint in South Africa have established her as a competitor to be feared, remained unfazed and seized control early in the 29km mountain bike.

Such was her dominance then that she was more than three minutes quicker than Samuels in both the mountain bike, in 1hr 22min 28sec, and the 12km trail run, in 50:24, to win by exactly seven minutes in 2:33:07. It was a performance that was good enough for ninth overall out of 175 finishers. Slack, from Stoke, was an equally distant third in 2:44:29.

“Couldn’t have asked for a better day,” Duffy said on Twitter, before acknowledging the efforts of men’s winner Hugo and Bradley Weiss, a fellow South African who was fourth and also hails from Western Province.

Hugo completed the race in 2:19:01 to finish almost four minutes clear of Courtney Atkinson, the runner-up from Queensland, but in keeping with the better half normally enjoying the final say, Duffy was not to be trumped.

“Keeping him on his toes,” she responded to a tweet from a well-wisher who shared in her delight at showing a clean pair of heels to the man of the house, if only fleetingly.

When she had time to come down from the euphoria that greeted her success, Duffy revealed how a touch of homesickness for Bermuda’s beaches provided the motivation to kick-start her challenge.

“I unfortunately do not get home much, and miss Bermuda’s beautiful beaches terribly, so to have a race on a beach was a real treat,” she said. “The swim went very well with me exiting the water with the leading men.”

But it was on the mountain bike where she outdid herself. “I held my own and managed to navigate the technical bike course well, which I was very happy about,” she said. “A technical bike course does not play well to my strengths, so to get through it incident-free is a success in itself.”

Duffy could hardly believe her luck that she had put so much time between herself and Samuels, which made the trail run effectively a coronation of Tour de France proportions. But for the Champs Élysées in Paris, see the Coondoo Trails in Nowra State Forest.

“I went on to the run unaware of how much I was winning by,” Duffy added. “The run course was pretty much all downhill, winding through the forest. I felt strong and was moving well, but was running hard because I didn’t know how much I was leading by.

“I turned on to the finishing shoot, took a look behind me and couldn’t see anyone in sight. I could enjoy running down the finishing shoot, giving high fives and soaking up the moment. I’m very pleased and the win was made better with Dan winning the men’s race. A perfect day for the both of us.”

In keeping with her ultra-professional approach to a thriving yet demanding sport, Duffy returns to Colorado on Tuesday to begin preparations for the XTERRA Southeast Championship at Oak Mountain State Park, in Pelham, Alabama, on May 17.

“I’m looking forward to it,” she said. “Lots of training to do before then.”