White pips Hill to claim first ROAG win

Ballito’s Tyronne White managed to get one over good friend and occasional team-mate Andrew Hill and up-and-coming junior Julian Jessop during the 45km Compendium Sugar Rush Classic marathon on Sunday to claim his maiden win in the 2015 Quattro ROAG Series.

The 2015 Quattro ROAG Series is a nine leg series that sees all of KZN’s top mountain bikers doing battle for the coveted title.

White slipped up and only entered on the day but he still made the cut for the top batch.

“I really thought that I had already entered but I was lucky that I sorted it out and was able to get myself into the A Batch because you are supposed to start in C Batch if you enter on the day,” said White.

For the Dolphin Coast resident Sugar Rush was a great way to prepare for the 2015 Old Mutual joberg2c which starts next week and for him and joberg2c partner Andrew Hill it was the ideal way to put some fine tuning on their combination for the multistage race next week.

It was a first ever Quattro ROAG Series race win for White who had to hold off three-time ROAG Series winner Andrew Hill and racing against his riding partner was something that was always going to be difficult but White was happy with the way things panned out on the exciting layout.

“It is great to get a first win on the ROAG Series, Andrew has dominated the series for a while so hopefully this win will stand me in good stead going forward into the rest of the series. I am just really happy that the hard work is paying off and hopefully I am peaking at the right time as we head into a busy period of racing,” said White.

As for the women’s race, Natalie Bergstrom made it two wins from two races in the 2015 Quattro ROAG Series when she won the Elite Women’s race comfortably ahead of Tiffany Keep in second and Isabel Moolman in third place.