Dusi king Andy is extremely sharp

McGregor, Khwela will challenge in brutal river race

THEY say the early bird catches the proverbial worm, and the saying could not be more apt than it is in Dusi week. By the time you settle in to the office, the first day of the Dusi will just about be done for the top dogs. Such is the nature of one of the most sapping physical challenges on the South African sporting calendar.

The list of protagonists expected to make up the podium come the end of day one are familiar enough. While the women’s race looks like a straight shootout between the experienced Abby Solms and a new foe, Bridgitte Hartley. Solms has the advantage, but she knows very well that her arch-rival has the pace and stamina to stay the course. She who blinks first may well spend Saturday afternoon in regret.

The men’s race, meanwhile, promises to be even tighter.

In Andy Birkett the modern era’s answer to the godfather of this threeday assault of the senses – the late, infinitely great Graham Pope-Ellis – the race has its main target for those who seek a challenge.

Birkett’s insatiable appetite to lord it from Maritzburg to Durban by alternative means is incredible, given his diversity of skills and abilities in other disciplines. He has dabbled in other extreme sports, but the year doesn’t feel right if he is not charging up mountains and tearing through bushes in the first few weeks of it.

It is a ritual, one that he embraces with ever growing stealth each time. The less he is seen tripping and plotting, the more others worry about just what he has in store for the contest. Still just 26, Birkett already has an aura about him, a sheen he has developed through six overall wins.

The even more remarkable part of that stat is that those wins have come in seven years. It is an astonishing ratio, one that has seen the Maritzburg College man grow from a baby-faced surprise winner in the K2, to the face of the Dusi. When he laces up, usually bruised or carrying a niggle of some sort, the rest of the field takes notice. What has set Birkett apart in recent years has been his ability to learn from his mistakes, and not make the same one twice.

Of course, he will not have it all his own way. It never is that simple on the Dusi trail.

Hank McGregor, the indefatigable legend of multisports, is again looking in ominous form. Every year, Hank the Tank insists that he is tiring of chasing the youngsters, and there is a collective fear that he could join the ranks of former Dusi icons.

And yet, every February, McGregor looms large, often muscling into the lead down Dusi Bridge. He is a predator of the best kind, and a monster across the flat water.

The two globe-trotting paddlers know that there is another huge challenge that will come with a chorus of support, in the shape of Sbonelo Khwela, the hope of the valley. Every year, Khwela gets better, and gets closer to what many have already said is scripted – Khwela becoming the first black paddler to win the Dusi.

In the past, that level of expectation and emotion has overwhelmed him, but the exuberance and calamity of youth has been replaced with execution and calm. His wins in the Umpetha Challenge and the 50 Miler say everything about his state of readiness for this week.

Khwela will not go quietly into the night this time.

All of this, all this ferocious threshing of carbon blades will occur before the school run this morning, and it will not relent until Saturday, when somebody storms into Blue Lagoon, one eye on the finish line, and another nervously over the shoulder.

Three days of sincere chess on boats await us, and the thrill is in the not knowing who will leave an opening first. Incredibly, their work will be done long before most of us have that first coffee break at the canteen.

It is nuts, in the most brilliantly brutal way.

The 2017 Dusi starts this morning at 6am.