Hill dashes to second spot

IT was sixth time lucky for Howick mountain biker, Stuart Marais, when he finally won the 42km Mandela Day MTB Dash race on Saturday.

The rider finally secured a victory in his home race on after fighting off the challenges of Highway’s Andrew Hill and Tyronne White in the tight 42km battle.

In the women’s race, Pietermaritzburg’s Christie Hearder secured a race-winning gap against Hayley Smith during the first major climb of the course. At the finish line, Christie held her lead.

“I am so stoked to have won this at last,” said Stuart. “It is about time. I have been trying since this race started and I have had thirds and seconds numerous times. It went pretty well today but it was never easy.”

“On the first climb I pushed hard and Andrew, Tyronne and I got away and then it was just a matter of consolidation and trying to play tactics to get a winning advantage. On the final major climb of the day at St Ives, with about eight kilomteres to go, Andrew and I were able to drop Tyronne,” he said.

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Marais crossed the line in 1:38:12 with Andrew, who claimed a podium finish in a marathon in Germany a week ago, finished just 19 seconds behind him. Tyronne was just more than a minute behind.

“I am mostly happy with the results,” said Hill. “I flew back on an international flight from Germany on Wednesday, so I was not expecting fireworks from my legs, but part of them seemed to arrive at the start.

“Stu has home-ground advantage, so he has that knowledge and he is a very good, strong, cross-country rider. He has the legs for the short, kicker climbs out there today. If it had been longer I may have been able to challenge him, but this is his type of riding and he is riding extremely well at the moment.”

Results:

42km men:

1 Stuart Marais 1:38:12

2 Andrew Hill 1:38:31

3 Tyronne White 1:39:48

42km women:

1 Christie Hearder 2:02:58

2 Hayley Smith 2:04:21

3 Claudia Slattery 2:13:58

21km men:

1 Nicholas Burczak 51:00

2 Sipho Kupiso 52:04

3 Nkululeko Pewa 53:28

21km women:

1 Riley Smith 1:07:20

2 Jodi Mackinnon 1:08:26

3 Amy Salvesen 1:14:58

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