Delvera Wine Estate is a great resource to Capetonians, located just 45min outside of Cape Town. They have all manner of exciting trails, obstacle courses and jump tracks to hone your skills on, before enjoying a tasty beverage and satisfying meal. Dirtopia has setup their home here and over the last ten years have built up the wine farm and surrounding areas into an ideal playground for kids young and old.
This past weekend saw the Dirtopia decade derby go down at Delvera and among the events on offer, was the 5 stage Enduro, with more than 100 riders taking part. The fledgling discipline is starting to gain momentum and this weekend's course showed that this is not only a sport for downhillers with an on-fire Matt Lombardi taking the win.
Surprisingly, many of the entrants have never progressed beyond the jump / 4x track into the hills behind. Meurant Botha did a great job laying out 5 stages that combined the best of what their trails had to offer. The courses included a mix of smooth flowing, loose and rocky, off-piste, wide-open and tight and techy trails. The route rewarded riders with the ability to lay down the horsepower with explosive bursts out of tight turns. There were some steep liaisons but everyone enjoyed it in the end, and the suffering was long forgotten after the first drifty turns.
Thanks to Meurant and Arina for a great event and now that we know what lies in those hills I'm sure many will be back for more. Meurant worked miracles with a relatively small hill and created 5 fun stages, catering for broad smiles all round.
"I was super excited to be racing another Enduro race. I was a bit off my best with a head-cold but thoroughly enjoyed the day and riding some more blind trails. I was happy with 3rd and will definitely be putting more short-intervals into the training plan in an effort to close the gap on Matt and Jonty" ~
Gary Barnad - 3rd Top 3 women:Rika Olivier
Gina Nixon
Hanri Dalton
Top 3 men: Matt Lombardi
Jonty Neethling
Gary Barnard
Words by Gary Barnard & Ewald Sadie
Photos by Ewald Sadie
must be enduro :-)
Just saying ..... you are being "that guy" who is clueless ...
Anyway, why are there no roaming lions and elephants in any of the pics .... this is Africa after all.....