Titled the “The most prestigious one day race in South Africa” the Illovo eston mountain bike marathon is one of the stars on the calendar and always attracts the top riders from around the country to the farming community of Eston. Hosted by the Eston farmers club the race is indeed a race not to miss.

An early start saw us into the start shoots at 7:40am for the elite men’s batch start at 8:00. The threatening rain of two years ago was nowhere to be seen and thankfully for the 4000 competitors, the weather gods was on their side. Up front the big guns had come down from JHB and up from Cape Town to enjoy the KwaZulu-Natal hospitality and the fast racing. The Garmin/Addidas team, Interlect, Specialized/USN, Mr Price BMC and all the top pros were all out to give it a good go.

The pace was set high from the word go with Knox and Stewart going for the hot spot 2km into the event. With the likes of the Garmin crew of Buys, Basingthweit, Haymans and Theron the pace would be flatout. The break came at the hot spot point with a group of 9 riders forming a small elite peloton headed by Burry himself. The riders who couldn’t make the bridge were Thereon and Heymans as the pace was extremely quick. Knox, Stewart, Reid and Stander were the first to make split the big group with a very hard attack from the Ghost Doitnow rider (Max Knox) putting the hammer down on the first big climb. The group splintered and I found myself in a group of Brendan Davies, Andrew Warr Phillip Buys and his team mate Marc Basingthweit. We picked up Knox who had a slow leak on his rear tire but couldn’t catch Stander and Stewart. The pace was too high for Basingthweit who pulled over with a mechanical issue. I then found myself with Brendan Davies and Andrew Warr as we crested the climb. Davies was fresh off his tour of the USA and his newly signed contract with US professional team SHO AIR-Specialized. Davies dropped off the pace and Warr and myself found ourselves chasing 4^th place. Unforntunatly just before the last water table I had a shifting mechanical and was forced off my bike. This left the gap for Warr and Davies to make the move and open up a gap. I lost about 1min in time and just couldn’t pull it back after chasing down Davies towards the finish line.

I crossed the line in 7^th place but was very happy with the way I felt. Unfortunately thats mountain biking and no one can predict when you might hit a mechanical snag along the way.       

Ultimately it was a great day out, with some outstanding organisation and sublime single track this race just gets better and better, let’s hope for more dry weather in 2012.

Results:

1^st       Brandon Stewart

2^nd      Phillip Buys

3^rd      Burry Stander

4^th      James Reid

5^th      Andrew Warr

6^th      Brendan Davies

7^th      Andrew Hill