A new single-track finish to the opening stage of the Liberty Waterberg Encounter will have the front-runners fully alert when the mountain-bike race gets under way on Friday.<\/p>\n
Presented by STANLIB, the three-day stage race in Bela Bela, Limpopo, will see the routes taking cyclists through Sondela Nature Reserve and Elements Private Golf Reserve.<\/p>\n
The stages will cover a total of 172km with 2 774 metres of ascent and route director Mel Meyer has promised a good workout for all riders, but one they will be able to manage.<\/p>\n
He said they had introduced two changes to the opening stage, which should give the riders something to think about.<\/p>\n
“On the first day, the route up to the second water point is the same as last year, but then they will experience something new,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We have built a fresh trail of single-track on a 6km section and this is something they will have to work through.<\/p>\n
“There is a tough little climb, followed by a bit of a scary downhill, which will be virgin trail for them all.”<\/p>\n
With much of the hard work still awaiting the riders over the last 20km, Meyer said they had altered the finish from the tar road of last year to a single-track through Elements Golf Reserve.<\/p>\n
“This means that the front guys will need to be aware of what is happening because once you get into the single-track with 3km to go there is no way you can do any overtaking,” said Meyer.<\/p>\n
“It’s a new section and the guys will have to get into the right position going into it.”<\/p>\n
He added that the second stage was much the same as last year, while they had introduced some changes to the final day’s route.<\/p>\n
“We will be using the single-track we created for the end of stage one, but this time they will be going in the opposite direction, so there will be a bit of a climb early on.<\/p>\n
“Further on in the route we had some heavy, sandy sections last year, but we have reduced those and the riders will experience some nice, fast-flowing single-track through Sondela.<\/p>\n
“The stage will end with a fast 15km section of single-track, which takes you to the finish.”<\/p>\n
Meyer said their objective was to produce a balanced route, with a certain degree of challenges, but one which was manageable for a wide range of riders.<\/p>\n
“You must remember, this is the Waterberg, so there can be some testing sections in the bushveld,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We want the entrants to be able to manage the routes, but without making it a walk in the park.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day they must feel they have come through a proper test, but not so damaging that they immediately want to go and sell their bikes.<\/p>\n
“As a social rider myself, I believe we have achieved the right balance.”<\/p>\n
For more information on the route, go to www.waterbergencounter.co.za.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new single-track finish to the opening stage of the Liberty Waterberg Encounter will have the front-runners fully alert when the mountain-bike race gets under way on Friday. Presented by STANLIB, the three-day stage race in Bela Bela, Limpopo, will see the routes taking cyclists through Sondela Nature Reserve and Elements Private Golf Reserve. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[1743,2633,2632,2594,2634,1945,1757,1747,2373,2237,2597],"class_list":["post-19127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-asg-events","tag-bela-bela","tag-liberty","tag-liberty-waterberg-encounter","tag-limpopo","tag-mountain-bike-race","tag-mountain-biking","tag-mtb","tag-mtb-race","tag-route","tag-waterberg-encounter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}