Sappi Mankele Challenge not for the faint-hearted
"The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine." These well-known words of John Howard rang true this past weekend when hundreds of mountain bikers of all shapes, sizes and ages descended on Mankele Mountain Biking Park.
This was the seventh year that the Sappi Mankele MTB Challenge was held at Mankele and the fourth year that Sappi was the title sponsor. “The event has grown over the past years making this year the biggest turnout to date,” Elsabe Coetzee of Sappi said. She added that the local heroes had their work cut out with riders coming from all over South Africa to take part.
“This event was chosen as one of the seeding events for the World Master Marathon Champs to be held in KwaZulu-Natal later this year.” The 65km race was hot from the start. JP Jung put down the hammer on the first climb but was soon caught by Ben Melt Swanepoel and Gawie Combrinck. Melt and Combrinck dropped the chasing group five kilometres into the race, which left all the top racing between the two of them. Combrinck, however, managed to pull away from Melt to secure the win. Jung kept fighting and pulled off a well-deserved third place.
Janine King led the ladies 65km race from the start with Amy Mcdougall chasing hard for second position while Monica Glover finished in third place. Coetzee confirmed that despite being almost halfway shorter than the renowned 65km, the 35km was going to be the fast race. “Andreas Kuhn and Ryan Clarke had a sprint finish. Kuhn managed to hold his line finishing in style while Liam de Klerk finished in third position,” Coetzee said.
“It never gets easier, you just go faster.”
The 2,5km kiddies race was flat and fast, much to the dismay of the mommies and daddies who ran alongside their offspring. The little maniacs loved it and went flat out with their panting parents trying to keep up.
