After arriving at the Mankele Bike Park on Thursday morning, myself and Craig suited up and headed out onto the course. The course was very similar to the national held there earlier in the year, apart from the climb which had now been shortened. It was really technical and suited me down to a tee. After a good ride we retired to the lapa at Mankele to watch the final few km's of the Tour de France, and was later joined by a group of downhillers from PMB, which provided some good entertainment.
Friday morning came around, and man it was super cold! I lay in bed as long as possible and decided to suite up at around 9. I rode some really cool line sand practised a couple of sections just to get everything dialled before the big day. Luckily my ride was done nice and early and I was able to rest up for the rest of the day. In the afternoon I was joined by Craig and we had a couple games of slightly serious pool, and once again watched an exciting stage of TDF.
Race day dawned, and I was once again greated by an icey morning chill. I went out to try warm my legs up as much as possible and before I knew it, we were on the Start line. The turn out was not huge, but there were the usual SA riders as well as one or two foreigners. Straight out the blocks it was Arno du Toit, Luke Roberts and I who made a break. Up the first climb they made a small gap on me, and I was left to try find my legs. After the first lap the gap was a mere 20sec and I began to find my legs.
Going into the second lap, I began to feel better, but unfortunately, with the gap that had built up, it meant as soon as I hit the main climb, they were entering a long fast single track and the gap would begin to open. Despite knowing this I pushed hard all the time and rode on the absolute limit in the single track. Coming in from the lap the gap had stretched to between 30/40sec and I knew it was definitely make or break.
I gave it my all and slowly began to chew away at the gap. Coming into the most technical part of the course I had closed the gap down to around 5 or so seconds and could see them just a head. I pushed extremely hard to close the small gap that was left. The next thing I found my self heading straight for a huge rock. I smashed into the rock with my chest and arm. I felt an excruciating pain coming from my upper right chest. I had two deep cuts in my arm and I was unable to stand on my left foot. At this point adrenaline completely took over and I went into overdrive. I tried to locate my bike which had rolled down the mountain side. I jumped on and rode most of the final 2km with one arm to try and limit the bumping, and pain to my right side. I crossed the line in third and was immediately suspected of broken collarbone, broken ribs and cracked/sprained ankle as well as a pretty banged up arm.
I was whisked of to hospital and underwent x-rays. After the results came out we were told that I sustained Severe muscle and tissue trauma, which included some torn tissue in my chest as well as trauma to the inter costal muscles. I also suffered from a sprained ankle, and a deeply cut arm.
A huge thank you needs to be said to every one that helped me out after crossing the finish line. Especially Linda and Charles Roberts, Dellah Paul, Mike Bradley, the Medics, Carmen Neethling and my girlfriend Kirsten who really supported me through the whole thing. Congrats to Luke who pulled of a Awesome 2nd.
Craig managed an awesome 4th elite considering he's been off the bike after his incident with a car.Candy had a ding dong battle with Mariske Strauss, and ended up coming in 2nd just 5sec down.
This week is a chilled one, a sort of recovery week, I'll be taking it easy, and will be trying to recover from the set back
chillin with some of the funniest downhillers ever
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