By Andrew Hill

The race village, situated in the Lynford school grounds was only 2km out of the Ixopo town and provided a festive atmosphere for the entire family. The weekend activities ranged from motorbike enduros, adventure racing, motorbike stunts, a mountain bike night race and the Mongoose schools series. The entire weekend was geared towards a country experience with loads of fun for everyone.

The race route for 2009 had changed from previous years taking riders on a short tour of the green dairy pastures and then through the Mackenzie Dairy. The day was full of surprises but the first awaiting the riders was the famous Sani2c floating bridge spread across a picturesque Ixopo Dam.

Nick Floros from Team Subaru had introduced the concept of ‘twin singletrack’ in this year’s Sani2C, allowing riders to pedal parallel to one another through the plantations. Nick had done it again and brought this new idea to the racing at Lynford in 2009, providing us with an amazingly flowing section of track.



The racing upfront was at an easy pace to start, with the usual suspects in search of a win. A group of six  
riders had formed on the flat and fast first 20km loop with the likes of Pete Smith (Jeep), Travis Walker (DCM), Ryan Ellis (House of Paint), Carl Calverly (Subaru), Nick Portious and yours truly.

I made the first attack of the day to see if the group would split but the flattish route didn’t have the necessary gradient to split the group with a hard effort. Some clever tactics would be needed to break the weaker riders off. Making use of the singletrack, four of us got away: Myself, Ryan, Pete and Travis. We put the hammer down and put a small gap between the chasing group and us. Then the racing eased but gradually picked up with Pete unable to hold on after a fast flat section.

This left three of us to push hard towards halfway, which flowed through the school and up a 5km hill to the plantations. Ryan led up the climb so we knew we’d have to lose him on a fast power section. That point came after the second water table where I put in a big effort with Travis following suit. We pushed hard and managed to break the rubber band. leaving us to ride towards the finish.

With 10km to go disaster stuck. My shock was not wanting to unlock from the rigid lockout position. This allowed Travis to gradually gain time on me through the bumpy singletrack. The fast downhill bumpy single track towards the finish proved very jarring but eventually I was very relieved to see the finish through the trees.

The day was great success with a very pleasing result leading up to Hill2Hill next weekend. Thanks to the guys at Lynford for another top class event.

Leading results
Men:
1 Travis Walker (DCM Chrome)
2. Andrew Hill (TIB insurance)
3 Ryan Ellis (House of Paint)

Women
1 Eszter Erdelyi Clue (Jeep)
2 Shale Exelby (W Squared)
3 Melanie Palframan (Fox /W Squared)

Report by Andrew Hill