Dike on a bike rides to victory
SUNDOWNER – Joshua Dike has been excelling in the sports of mountain biking and road cycling.
Curro Aurora learner Joshua Dike has been excelling in the sports of mountain biking and road cycling despite lockdown restrictions.
“He competes under the banner of Curro Aurora and is part of a group of mountain biking cyclists that participated in the Spur Schools Series that was suspended due to lockdown,” said Curro head of sport Adrian Ferreira.
Joshua started cycling for fun when he was just five years old. This was something fun the whole family could do together and he fell in love with the sport. Joshua was introduced to racing by riding 94.7 children’s races and then a few tandem races with his dad. He then began track cycling in 2018.
He is a keen mountain biker but his favourite discipline by far is road cycling and started taking cycling seriously midway through 2019.
Joshua’s first major race was the SA Youth Road Cycling Champs in KwaZulu-Natal.
Due to the pandemic, cycling has had to go virtual. “Gauteng Schools’ Cycling established a series of virtual cycling races, using the Zwift platform, to keep the cyclists active and allow them to compete during the lockdown period. He cycled on a bicycle that works off a smart trainer that simulates the movement of riding,” said Ferreira.
The first trial race included 23 cyclists of Gauteng South Schools and Joshua performed extremely well in winning the 21km event in 00:34:30. The next race was opened to include schools from all provinces in South Africa and he finished the 20km course in second place out of the 60 riders in a time of 00:32:42.
“Joshua also participated in the SA Schools virtual race on Thursday, 13 August. The race included 43 cyclists from all provinces. The virtual route was a 30km race on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, the traditional closing stretch of the Tour de France. Joshua did exceptionally well and won the race. You make us proud Joshua.”
Joshua’s other results:
SA Road Cycling Championships
- 19th out of 50 in the road race 80km
- 13th out of 29 in the time trial 11.8 km.
Gauteng Track Championships
- 2019 three silver and one gold medal
- 2020 five silver and one bronze medal.
Gauteng Road Cycling Championships 2020
- 5th overall in the road race 86km
- 5th overall in the time trial 15km.
Gauteng School’s Virtual Series
- Overall 4th, having missed one of the four races.
