This prestigious Continental Championship event is to be held at Mankele Mountain Biking, a purpose built Mountain Bike venue outside of the city of Nelspruit situated some 380km East of Johannesburg.  The program for the event includes Cross Country and Downhill racing with the title of African Continental Champion in both disciplines on offer and the international UCI points this category of race attracts.

The following categories earn UCI points: Elite and U23 men cross country, Elite and Junior men: Downhill. We will also cater for all non-UCI all categories from Nippers (8-10 years old) through to Grand Masters (60+) in both Cross Country and Downhill. Thereby have a African Continental Champion in each age group in both disciplines, men and women.

Mankele Mountain biking has accommodation facilities on site as well as camping and is less than 2km from a large hotel.

Our XC rider Roan Exelby gives us some feedback on his weekend at the African Champs:

Hi Guys…

Africa Continental MTB Champs
Mankele certainly raised the bar for XC courses in South Africa – the guys there are doing an awesome job of making permanent trails.   The course changed a bit since our National earlier in the year becoming slightly shorter and more technical.

Last time I raced on my Morewood prototype hardtail and this time on the new Full-Sus.  Jislaaik what a difference!  The bike is so supple, it just eats the bumps up – you can drive the corners hard and brake late – there is just no way you could flow like that on a hard tail… it just wouldn’t be possible.

My form has been down a bit and I managed a 6th place.  So why was I slower than earler in the season??  Definitely NOT the bike!  Here are the excuses… maybe you can use them one day too !!!  Hehehe!  The season started in January and racing was intense all the way up to the European World Cups in May.  Its just not possible to hold form all year (unless you are superhuman   … being pro would also help a bit !)   So I think its a good idea to take a bit of a break mid season, build up again and hit the end of the year firing on all 2 cranks (!??) – well, thats the plan anyway!

After the racing, they announced the National Squad for World Champs in Canberra, Australia – I cracked the nod – super stoked – its gonna be a blast!

Thats it for now…  Out.

Cheers Roan

Travis Browning was there on his Morewood Izimu and this is what he had to say about his weekend:

This past weekend I went road trippin‘ with the Maverick crew to the African continental champs held at Mankele mountain bike park in Nelspruit. We left on Thursday around 11am. After a long drive and a couple stop and go’s due to road maintenance we finally arrived. The venue was perfect for the event, there’s loads of camping area’s, lodges for the rich folks, a game room, pools, and most importantly good trails! I was happy to see our tents had already been pitched when we arrived at 7PM, coz I really didn’t feel like wrestling with tent poles in the dark. I had been told it got cold in Nelspruit…but I wasn’t expecting it to be that cold! We woke up to ice on our tents and a frozen solid Monster energy can that Conrad had left outside, but we survived!On Friday Hayden, Tim, Tayla and myself walked the track early, it was pretty much the same route we rode in February which I was happy about coz I really enjoy that track. It can be divided into two sections, the top is really fast and rough, then a road crossing separates the next steep technical wooded section with loads of switch backs and littered with rock gardens. The super fast, steep off-cambered section at the top was a real suspension tester, I’m really thankful to Pat for hooking me up with the new Fox rc2 rear shock coz it handled so well on that rough stuff! We started practice at 12 on Friday, I felt a bit shaky on the technically demanding track to begin with, but a few runs later I got into the rhythm of things and started enjoying myself.Saturday morning we started practice once it had warmed up a bit…this was only around 9 or so once the sun had come up over the mountain ridge over looking our camp site! I used my moto trainer and did timed runs of the course, I really feel this is the way to get faster because it’s a race against yourself every run and it pushes you to improve even if it’s by half a second. It was also useful finding out which lines were faster or slower, it was no longer a case of guessing which is faster, all I had to do was time it and decide from there. I had a small crash in the afternoon, luckily no serious injuries, just a tweaked shoulder and a roastie on my pinky finger. That afternoon I flatted my rear tyre three times in three consecutive runs…I wasn’t in a good mood by the third one! So I pumped up my tyre quite a bit harder and used a heavy duty tube, that seemed to help as I didn’t flat for the rest of the weekend.Sunday came and it was go time…all the riders had to use SA jerseys as we were all representing our country (it was pretty funny though coz there were no other countries participating anyway.) I did two practice runs in the morning and headed up to the top of the hill for the timed run. I was way to cautious on the fast top section, and stalled a couple times in the wood section, I ended the run with a time of 2:24. That put me in about 15th position. I wasn’t too concerned about that run since it was just to give us an idea on the times for the final. My race run went really well, I focused on carrying speed between corners and forced myself to brake just a bit later into the corners. My run flowed really well from top to bottom and I had alot of fun doing it. I ended up getting a 2:18. This put me in 9th position overall, just 0.01 seconds of 8th place, and 7th in the elite men. I’m happy with how the weekend went, this being my first actual downhill race after my accident I didn’t expect to make a winning come back to be honest, just wanted to be on the bike again and compete in a race scenario. With racing over for the season I want to carry on with my training and get back some DH skills!

Thanks to Conrad, Mike, Steph, Fab and the Brown family for a really good weekend and to Lloyd for the photees.

Ride safe, TB

African Continental Championships 2009

Final Results Downhill 12/Jul/09

Category No. Cat Name Time

Mankele, South Africa

Pos

Sub Junior Boys

119 JB Alan Hatherly 02.31.54

243 JB Peter Bentley 02.49.56

315 JB Luke Evans 03.07.20

427 JB Christopher Rigby 03.10.20

Youth Men

126 YM Tiaan Odendaal02.23.26

211 YM Kyle Davids 02.34.66

317 YM Alasdair Fey 02.36.83

Junior Women

110 JW Tayla Brown 03.47.32

Junior Men

19 JM Tim Bentley 02.08.33

233 JM Pierre Van der Merwe 02.13.86

313 JM Simon Dinkelman 02.19.06

412 JM Luke Davis 02.23.01

514 JM Doug Du Plessis 02.26.37

630 JM Andries Van Schalkwyk 02.27.78

725 JM Cameron Muller 02.45.66

 

Elite Men

134 EM Johann Potgieter 02.03.20

23 EM Hayden Brown 02.13.70

31 EM Louis-Bresler Knipe 02.14.58

47 EM Ryno Fourie02.14.78

536 EM Jarryd Haley 02.17.57

646 EM Wesley Augustyn 02.18.30

737 EM Travis Browning 02.18.31

85 EM Thomas Rood 02.18.35

92 EM Kelvin Purchase 02.20.02

104 EM Alex Bramley02.23.23

116 EM David Dinkelman 02.34.08

128 EM Justin Victor 02.34.54

Sub Vet Men

150 SV Matt Smith 02.26.41

224 SV James Morland02.33.37

331 SV Conrad Davies 02.51.05

423 SV Mike Kemp 03.14.67

538 SV Michael Bradley 03.39.27

Veteran Men

120 VM Norman Hatherly 02.38.99

216 VM Neil Evans 03.09.91

345 VM David Rigby 06.28.66

Sport Men

122 FM Bradly Illingworth 02.21.77

239 FM Frank Liebenberg02.28.56

321 FM David Hogan 02.39.64

435 FM Fabien Lemasson 02.40.04

542 FM Rob Horsman 02.43.45

640 FM Joshua Liebenberg 02.45.98

741 FM Sean Shepherd 02.49.42

829 FM Jon Sherwood 02.54.70

918 FM Alex Frisby 02.59.69

1028 FM Shaun Roodt 03.04.03