Five local riders join Hi-Q Cycling Academy

Most of the team members, Ruben Helberg, Demarco Pillay, Qhawe Mdluli, Ryan Terry and Callum Ormiston, Brendan Phillips (Ermelo), Jeandré Gautier (Witbank), Alvin Bronkhorst (Piet Retief) and Blake Coetzer (Johannesburg), who will also ride for Team Hi-Q, reside in Mbombela and White River.

Robbie Nilsen and Gavin Cocks established the academy for u/16 riders that were riding individually. Very quickly the team had six u/16 riders and a few u/18s.

“Our vision was to give young riders an opportunity to race for a team and develop into professional cyclists. It also formed a platform for riders to get signed by pro teams and use this as a stepping stone to compete in international and grand tours,” said Cocks.

In 2004, multiple Tour de France champion, Chris Froome approached Cocks and Nilsen to also include u/23 elite cyclists.

“We then started to compete against the top pro teams in South Africa and achieved some very good results. We have lived our dream of having riders not only winning the South African Championships, but riders like Froome being one of the world’s best.”

Back then, defending South African National MTB Marathon Championships title holder, Nico Bell, former member of Team Qhubeka, Christoff van Heerden, Alex Pavlov, who won the 2016 Bestmed Cycle4Cansa Mountain Bike Challenge and Aran Brown were also part of Team Hi-Q.

“My dream is to repeat our previous results and see some of our Hi-Q riders cycling for pro teams in Europe in the future. Our vision remains the same for 2018 and team manager, Anton van Tonder and Euan Ormiston (operational manager) will oversee and guide the team in many events during the year.”

The team has a busy schedule, starting with a six-day training camp in Sabie early in December. They will also participate in the Mpumalanga tour which is a seriously challenging event passing over some of the province’s toughest climbs.

This is then followed by the team competing in the Mpumalanga championships in Badplaas, which is an interesting racing format of a road race, time trial, hill climb and criterium.

It is a build-up for the all-important South African Championship held from February 5 to 11 in Oudtshoorn, Western Cape.

There are plans to send the team to race in Europe in July 2018 to further develop their skills and gain valuable experience by racing against the best that it has to offer.

“We are hoping for a successful 2018 campaign, but more importantly, it is imperative that they have fun and enjoy every minute of this incredible opportunity they have, building friendships that will last a lifetime. Hopefully we can repeat history and have another Froome come from the Hi-Q team.”