Morewood XC rider Roan Exelby gives us feed back on his weekend at the nationals:

Bad luck strikes again!

Tire problems seemed to be the flavour of the day for lots of riders, myself included – I paid special attention to getting a tire that would work on this course. Its quite tight forcing you to use a lightweight tire but the rocky nature of the trail also means that you have to use something with a strong carcass. So its all about compromise – as always, performance comes at a price.

The stakes were high with just a couple of points separating Marc Bassingthwaite, Brandon Stewart, Renay Goustra and Craig Paul – the SA title would come down to the last of the 5 race series. No pressure!!!

The race started out well, I settled into the racing for the first couple of laps then started pushing the pace up a bit, dropping Marc and Philip(Garmin) to take the lead. Then i burped my tire, and again … and again – forcing me to slow down on the technical stuff to avoid pinch flatting. Marc started clawing back and passed me just into lap 6. I stopped to bomb my wheel, losing around 1min30 sec … On the last lap, I managed to catch back slightly but not enough! Thats the way it goes.

Marc rode a solid race and deserves to have a good win – he had technical issues at the World Cup and his form is good… its just a pity that a Namibian wins the SA XC Cup ! Good work Bass. But watch out next year! hehehe!

Cheers Roan

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