MTB overflowing with championships

LAST weekend's KwaZulu-Natal cross country championships proved to be a great success, but no rest for the riders with more championships this weekend and next weekend.

Stuart Marais shrugged off a bad head cold and a "stupid" crash to claim the KZN title after a dice with Henry Liebenberg that lasted most of the race.

Marais rode away from his young U23 rival at the start of the fourth lap of six and had built a lead of just over a minute as they started the final lap. He was relieved to have that cushion because half way through the final lap the Howick rider "hit a small tree".

It sounds like a weekend warriortype mistake and the likeable rider was able to laugh about it afterwards but he was not happy out on the course and the ramifications could have been serious.

Marais said he was "looking at the clouds" to see if he was going to be riding in the approaching rain for the final lap when he rode into the tree. He broke his front brake lever and cracked his handlebar but was able to get around the course with no front brake and a few sketchy moments.

That meant he claimed his third KZN cross country title in three years – pretty impressive and it seems some people have finally realised he is worth sponsoring as I have heard whisperings about some small deals which will hopefully allow him to keep riding (watch this space).

Liebenberg took the U23 title and Johandre Marx beat Kusaselihle Ngidi to the junior title.

Junior Tiffany Keep beat U23 Christie-Leigh Hearder into second place in the women's race and massive congratulations to them, but there was not one senior woman taking part. For the past decade or so there has been a steady stream of very good young girls coming through the junior and U23 ranks and then very few progressing into the senior ranks.

The likes of Bianca Haw, Candice Neethling (Lill) and Mariske Strauss are the exceptions, and it is worrying that only Strauss seems to be taking her obvious talent onto the international scene, although to be fair Haw has been struggling with injury and illness and may still feature.

I believe part of the problem lies at the feet of the national administrators who seem to have little planning in place to develop talent. This is of course partly due to the (in my opinion) complete mismanagement of Cycling SA over the past few years which has resulted in the organisation sinking in debt.

But it is more than that and the next two weekends prove that lack of planning ...

Today in Grabouw in the Western Cape the country's top MTB riders compete for the South African championship title. Next weekend in Bloemfontein is the SA Enduro Championships on Saturday and the SA XCO Championships on Sunday.

Meanwhile also in KZN today is the provincial enduro champs and tomorrow the provincial downhill champs, both at Giba Gorge.

Let's think about all of that for a moment: The cross country scene in this country is woefully under supported with a pathetic number of events to cater for the cross country specialist who is hoping to compete in the only Olympic discipline.

This forces riders like Alan Hatherly to either compete overseas (with exhorbitant costs meaning big sponsors are required – because CSA has no money to help), or riders have to compete in marathon events which are wonderfully over supported by organisers and sponsors.

Now that we have forced our cross country Olympic hopefuls to race marathon, we put the premier marathon event a week before the premier XCO event and a selection race for the World Champs? All just a week after the provincial champs.

Poor Stuart Marais and co trying to ride, recover and earn points to get more SA riders into the Olympics.

Come on CSA, lets have some forethought and planning that considers the needs of the riders!