Having a once off KZN Championship was a new thing to downhill this year. The event took place the weekend before the first round of the UCI MTB World Cup in PMB. We had put tons of work into the track, on a number of weekends before, prepping it for the world cup. The track was awesome and we had great weather for Saturdays practise. It rained heavily on Saturday night and the first practise run was super slippery and I decided to put a mud tyre on the front. Cloud 9, the steep section, was so slippery that the officials advised riders not to ride it.The mud tyre was not necessary for my seeding run as the track had dried up a lot. It just provided some nice rolling resestance on the pedal section. I took the officials advice and rode the chicken run at Cloud 9 because I didn't know if it had dried up. I pushed hard in my run, but held back a little to conserve energy. I was seeded 2nd Junior.
After talking to some of the riders who had ridden after me, I decided that I would just ride the slower line of Cloud 9 to be safe. Track conditions were actually perfect but I had already commited to the slow line so I stuck with it. I was so lucky to have used Andre from Rush Sports' dropper seatpost which made a huge difference on the pedal section. I made a slight mistake on the hip table and lost control and broke through the tape on the side of the track, but luckily kept it together and only lost a few seeconds instead of a lot more if I had creashed. I finished srong and there was some good support at the bottom of the track,I finished 2nd KZN Junior and 3rd Junior Overall. Also stoked to have finished 28th Overall in a field full of international riders. Huge thanks to the race organisers for the awesome job they did, to Andre for all his help with the bike prep and Max Cluer/Team Jeep for all their input.
