KZN MTB International - Giba Gorge

The team landed in sunny South Africa on Thursday evening ready for their 5 week training camp in the home country of our U23 rider, Rourke Croeser.  With new ride Dave Fletcher on board and guest for our time away, Lee Craigie thoughts quickly turned to our first event of the camp, Giba Gorge on Saturday.

The race was based at a Mountain bike park and Fridays practice was in some very light rain on what was a fantastic course.  Saturdays forecast however was heavy rain and after returning to our base in Pietermaritzburg we prepped for our first race on South African soil.

Saturday morning we awoke to a bout of minor food poisoning with Dave coming off worse and unable to race.  This was devastating news for both Dave and the team and puts back his Orange Monkey-Cannondale debut to our second race in Karkloof in two weeks' time.

The rest of the team headed down to the course and were surprised to find a very British feel to it with heavy rain making the course a mud fest.  The course did hold up to the rain though and Lee went off at a good pace in the Elite Women's race coming through the first lap in 3rd position.  After a good battle with two South African riders Lee held on for 3rd - a fantastic start to the day!

Rourke, Ben and Paul lined  up for the Elite race just as the rain came down harder and all got off to a great start getting in amongst the race from the offset.  By lap two Rourke was pushing the pace at the head of the race closely followed by Phillip Buys and James Reid.  Ben meanwhile was working his way nicely through the field starting to push inside the top 10.  Paul was also having a good ride and sitting in the top 15.  

As the race went on and the rain started to ease the course became harder with sticky mud giving the riders a test in skills as well as fitness.  Paul started to fade around lap 4 of 7 after a problematic winter has limited his bike time.  As they entered the final lap Ben was pushing on hard and into 5th position.  Rourke was still in the lead and trying his best to shake off Phillip and James.

After 7 hard laps of racing Rourke crossed the line in 2nd position (1st Under 23) just behind Phillip Buys who eventually managed to shake off our South African star.  Ben held on for 5th while Paul did well to keep battling on.

It was a mixed day with all the guys feeling under the weather and disappointed that Dave had to stay at home but given the circumstances delighted with the results and really looking forward to settling down now and getting a great block of training in before the festival in Karkloof.

We had been given a fantastic welcome by everyone here - Max Cluer and his team had done a great job on the event and made us feel at home. We would like to say a big thank you we received from all of the South Africans who couldn't have done enough for us.  The South African adventure continues, stay tuned for our next update….

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