SA XCO #3 and WC XCO Weekend at Bloemendal.
Hot. It was very hot. But the racing was even hotter. (Go King of cliches). On a weekend that turned into a celebration of cross country mountain biking that saw the cream of the crop in South Africa meet at the Bloemendal Trail Park on the outside of Durbanville near Cape Town, the intense heat was the big equaliser. Manage your temperature and look after your bike, and the rest will be easy. That at least was the theory. ItClick to read more and to see the event image gallery
Bloemendal Wine Estate
Bloemendal Wine EstateClick to read more and to see the event image gallery
Contermanskloof MTB Trails
As part of my project to document all of the trails built and run by the TBMBC, week one showcases the Contermanskloof MTB Trails. This is one of the many jewels in the crown of the Tygerberg Mountain Bike Club, and it’s the most central, being nestled between other club trails at Meerendal, Hoogekraal, Bloemendal, and Hillcrest. The farm offers a range of trails from green routes for the novice to advanced black category trails for those who like toClick to read more and to see the event image gallery
The U 2021 Race Date Announced
Greetings from Piket-Bo-Berg Trails! The U 2021 Date Announced. We’re all about Spring here in our fruit-farming valley. It’s a beaut of a time in the Southern Hemi. For that reason, we’ve decided to bring our boutique stage race, The U, a few weeks earlier, right into the heart of Spring. Of course, this won’t affect our exclusive offering and we’ll be sure to create a more than ‘EPIC’ experience with our incredible hospitality, personal touches, mind-blowing trails and scenic raceClick to read more and to see the event image gallery
Bloemendal Night Ride with Tygerberg Mountain Bike CLub
Tygerberg Mountain Bike Club: Annual Number Auction. Once a year the Tygerberg Mountain Bike Club (TMBC) has an annual auction of bike board numbers to raise funds for the Volunteer Wildfire Services. This is always preceded by an evening ride on the trails at the Bloemendal Trail Park near Durbanville. This year over R50k was raised for VWS and the club has kicked in an additional amount to make a sizeable donation. With over 120km of singletrack under their controlClick to read more and to see the event image gallery
WC XCO Series Race 3
This WC XCO race can only be described as a very wet and muddy affair. These images were taken at an event and in a location that should have been a dry dustbowl in mid-October. The rain gods of Elgin had other ideas, however, producing a non-stop deluge of water here in the Western Cape for the entire week preceding the race. As a photographer, I love this kind of stuff because even though it makes it incredibly hard toClick to read more and to see the event image gallery
SA MTB XCO Championships.
After a year of chaos, compliments of Corona, we finally kicked off the 2020 MTB season at the Computer Mania South African XCO Mountain Bike championships at Coetzenberg outside Stellenbosch. It may have been a field limited to just a few categories, and not everyone could make it at short notice, but it was a great success. Alan Hatherly and Mariska Straus won the Elite categories in the men’s and women’s categories. Luke Moir proved his sporting pedigree by beingClick to read more and to see the event image gallery
AmaRider 100 Miler
The Amarider 100 and 50 miler individual one-day mountain bike ultra-marathon of 160km is an annual test of MTB riders endurance. It has a super laid back vibe, but always boasts a couple of very competitive racers gunning for the top spot. From its humble beginnings in 2009 it has grown into what is now one of the must-do-events on the mountain biking calendar. The scenery is beautiful in the Swartland during Autumn and the riding is not technical. TheClick to read more and to see the event image gallery
MTB Enduro Racing Makes a Splash.
MTB Enduro Racing Based on the successful MTB Enduro racing Mavic Trans Provence concept, the idea is to bring riding and the results linked to it back to mountain biking and away from the current endurance-only formats. That said, it is not the idea to make the race highly technical as per downhill racing, but simply to focus the competition on the trails component of the sport. And yes, perhaps your skinny tire 29’er carbon hardtail is perhaps not theClick to read more and to see the event image gallery