Beating the best in paradise

Climbing 1000 metres in only ten kilometres against the world’s best professional mountain bikers in 40 degrees Celsius Mauritius heat and tropical humidity is enough to ‘break’ even some of the most experienced rider’s legs.

Fortunately Ballito’s Joshua Nelson and teammate Alex Mayer had their climbing legs on to beat the dragging hills of the Southern Tropical Challenge mountain bike race, taking overall victory in the U21’s and fourth overall. The race took place in Mauritius from November 26 to 29.

“There were a lot of hills that were too steep to ride and big, loose volcanic rocks made it impossible to get enough traction. It was like walking up a wall,” said Nelson.

He said even 35-year-old Julien Absalon, widely regarded as the best cross-country mountain biker of all time, could not ride up all the hills.

The 18-year-old Nelson said they climbed a total of 1 800 metres over 45 kilometres in stage one. In Mauritius they did the total amount of climbing one would normally do in a full race in South Africa in just ten to 12 kilometres.

By the end of stage one, Nelson and Mayer were leading the U21 category by ten minutes and were in third place overall.

“On stage two we were suffering from the huge effort we put in on stage one. We kept getting dropped and played catch-up a lot,” he said.

Nelson said his and Mayer’s legs blew and they finished the stage sixth overall and three minutes behind their nearest U21 competitors. The previous day’s results meant that they still led the U21 classification by seven minutes by the end of day two.

“Stage three was really interesting because that was when everything happened,” he said.

The pace was extremely fast in the beginning. There were a lot of portages (stop and walk) that broke riders’ rhythm and riding on soft beach sand that was particularly unforgiving on the legs.

Nelson said he and Mayer initially battled to keep up with the leaders but fortunately regained their strength in the second half of the stage.

“Absalon and Lincoln broke away and one of the other U21 riders chased after them, leaving his teammate behind. We decided to be tactical and not chase them down. We knew they would be disqualified if they finished more than two minutes apart,” said Nelson.

Inevitably the U21 who left his teammate behind could not sustain the pace and Nelson and Mayer began to slowly close the gap between them and team Absalon and Lincoln.

“When Absalon and Lincoln saw us catching up to them, they stopped and waited for us because they said they wanted us to win the stage. I was totally blown away that my hero, Julien Absalon wanted us to win,’ said Nelson.

As Murphy law would have it, the drama continued for Nelson and Mayer in the last three kilometres when first, Mayer dropped his chain on the steep downhill before Nelson punctured.

“We had no time to fix my flat tyre because the other riders could catch up very fast on a downhill, so I just rode the last two kilometres with a flat tyre,” said Nelson.

He said Absalon showed great sportsmanship riding behind him, coaching him how to ride to keep his flat tyre from climbing off the rim.

Nelson also thanked his coach, Ty White, for his invaluable support in achieving his goals.

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