The first round of the SA DHI Cup series was held once again in Cape Town, this time in the picturesque valley of Jonkershoek, just outside Stellenbosch.
The track was awesome, it is wide open, flat out and has very little room for error! It is a venue with so much potential and I really look forward to racinf there in the future!
I arrived there on thursday and got my trackwalk out of the way, If an athlete could fall in love with a track... I would have married this one by now! its super fast, with little jumps all along the trail and has a couple tricky corners! I couldnt wait to hit the hill and get practice going!
Race Day arrived and I was super pumped to get on my bike and thrash out some practice runs! I nailed all my lines during practice and felt confident leading into the seeding/qualifying run. - out of the gate on my seeding run I was feeling like I was on a cracker of a run. I was hitting all my lines and about half way down the track I started to feel my back end of the bike start to drift around some of the corners, I straight away knew that I had punctured. I got off my bike and ran the rest of the track, getting to the bottom with the second slowest time of the day, I fixed my flat and got to the top ready to really show what I was able to do on the hill!
Out of the gate and quoted by almost everyone "dude, bro, you were hanging sooooo loose" a term used by downhillers to describe the riders style, its not my usual style of riding, but somehow I was hanging REAL loose! and maybe a little too loose, I hit the first corner and both feet blew off the bike and I was goon riding more than anything else haha. I quickly recovered but then into the next switchback corner I went off track and lost valuable time, still focussed and determined to do well, I regathered myself and pinned down the rest of the track, hitting all my lines and "hanging loose" I was pedalling as hard as I could, but I got to the bottom of the track but the damage was done... I was lying 3rd overall with still many fast riders to come down. I had a solid time of 02.34.60 but i knew it wouldnt' hold and slowly I saw my time slip down the ranks. I ended up 13th elite and 15th overall, all that I can do now is move on and forget about what happened this weekend.
The next race is African Continental Champs, training is going well and will leave updates on how it is going soon.
A big thanks to Andre from Rush Sports for getting my bike ready before this weekend, and too the race organisers for an awesome track.
