#TuksCycling: UCT outrides Tuks to win Varsity Mountain Bike title

Posted on October 31, 2019

Try they did, but unfortunately, mechanical setbacks at crucial times hampered the Tuks men's mountain bike team in their quest to win the FNB Wines2Whales Pinotage Varsity Mountain Bike-title. 

The UCT men's and women's teams dominated winning five of the six stages. Tuks's Andries Nigrini and Antonie Joubert managed to win the first stage, but from day two they seemed to have run out of the luck. It led to them finishing second overall. Tuks's women's team was fourth overall.

According to Joubert, it was not only their mountain biking skills that got tested during the three days of racing. The weather was apparently horrific. The riders had to ride through a hail storm during stage one. 

"We had a ding dong battle with UCT's Richard Simpson and Michael Lambrecht during stage one from Lourensford to Oakvalley. When we were in the lead, my bike's chain dropped off. In the time we had to stop to fix it, UCT passed us. We caught up with them where we had to run with our bikes. Shortly afterwards the gears of Andries's bike starting giving problems which led to us dropping back to second again. We managed to regain the lead just before the finish.

"For me, day two was the worst. I started feeling cold and as impossible as it might seem, I felt even colder when we finished.  I could not get going at all. It felt like the temperature never soared above 13 degrees. UCT managed to get about a six minute lead on us," explains Joubert.

"Andries and I, however, made a pact promising each other that we are going to make a fight of it up until the finish. From the start of stage three, we tried to dominate things. We first tried to ride away from UCT on the single track sections. 

"When it did not work, we resorted to launching one attack after another. Eventually, it seemed as if the UCT riders cracked. We slowly but surely started to gain time on them. I think at one stage we had a near three-minute lead. 

"Then, disaster struck again. On crossing a small bridge, Andries lost control of his bike and crashed. His bike's handlebar broke on impact. To Andries's credit, he was back on his bike in two ticks trying to steer with what was remaining. Needless to say that the UCT riders caught up and passed us as we were trying to fix the handlebar. 

"Again we caught up, but the last few kilometres made for real technical riding. In the wet and muddy conditions with the bike's steering mechanism still not what it should be, it was near impossible for Andries to manoeuvre his bike as he would have liked. UCT ended up beating us in the end by about seven minutes." 

- Author Wilhelm de Swardt

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