Race Report Melt Swanepoel

"Like kissing your sister" was Melt's answer when we asked him how he felt about his 2nd place in the Big Induna SA Champs.

Here follows his Race Report

Hi Everyone!

Induna Adventure Camp just outside Hazyview, played host to the 4th round of the Mazda Drifter Marathon Series. The race doubled as the South African Marathon Championships, which meant that the day’s winners would also collect the 2007 National titles.

It came as no surprise that the start line was filled with a who’s who of SA Mountain biking and everyone looked ready for action. The course consisted of a 40km first loop after which we would pass close to the start/finish line before heading out for the final 35km loop.

The race started in near perfect racing weather but the action would soon heat things up to boiling point! Johan van Zyl (GT/Mr Price) was the first to launch a serious attack up the opening steep climb. His move shattered the field and we were soon riding in a single line, just scrambling to stay on the wheel ahead of you. In all the confusion Kevin Evans (MTN/Raleigh) took the King of the Mountain Prime as a small group formed at the head of affairs. The single track after the initial climb diminished this front group even more and soon Kevin and I found ourselves in the lead group with Max Knox (Trek/Fiat), JP Pearton (Mazda/Merida) and Renay Gouwstra (Mongoose) for company.

Local rider Max Knox was really forcing the pace and his knowledge of the course allowed him to ride really fast through the hippo and quad bike trails that littered the route. This made things really tough for the chasing group which contained both our teammates Mannie Heymans and Brandon Stewart, Shan Wilson (Trek/Fiat), David George, Arno Viljoen (GT/Mr Price) and a few others.

Once we were on the more open roads everyone in our lead group contributed to the pace making in order to maintain our hard earned gap to the chasers.

All our work paid off and we entered the second 35km loop of the race with a gap of about 2minutes to the pursuers. This second loop started off with a long climb and Kevin went straight to the front and stepped on the gas. Renay Gouwstra was the first to fall back and closer to the top of the climb Max Knox also had to give best.

I led over the top of the climb and continued forcing the pace as I wanted to put JP under a bit of pressure on the downhill since he was riding a bike without any suspension.

He was up to the task and this left the three of us at the front of the race with about 25km left in the race. I knew JP wouldn’t work with two MTN/Raleigh riders, so I just went to the front and kept a pretty steady tempo as we wound our way along the Sabie and Mac-Mac rivers.

Behind us Max Knox’s local knowledge proved a mixed blessing as he took a wrong turn which would eventually cost him a high finish in the race.

With about 13km’s left to race we went up the final climb of the day – a steep 4km ascent. Halfway up Kevin attacked hard and opened a small gap. JP tried to respond but he seemed a spent force at this stage. Sensing his fatigue I also attacked and left JP behind.

From here it was just a flat out time trial to the finish line for the three of us.

In the ensuing kilometers nothing changed and Kevin stayed away to win the race with me in 2nd and JP in 3rd.

Last year’s winner, Arno Viljoen, had a strong finish to the race and clinched 4th spot with the ever present Mannie Heymans in 5th. This bodes well for the two of them as they leave for Europe in the coming week and are facing up to some hard racing over the pond!

Jaco and the team at Induna did a brilliant job of laying out a well balanced course within the confines of SA MTB’s restrictions. I look forward to next year’s edition of this awesome race!

Happy trails,
Melt