Recreational cyclists looking to mix it up with the pros have a small window of opportunity to enter the Bestmed Sondela Mountain Bike Classic that takes place near Bela-Bela in Limpopo on June 24 and 25.<\/p>\n
Entries for the annual festival – which offers 20km, 40km and kiddies’ races on the Saturday to complement the 60km feature event on the Sunday – close at midnight on Friday.<\/p>\n
Organisers, who are catering for up to 1 400 riders across the three main events, said limited slots were still available in what they billed “the Bushveld’s biggest mountain bike bash”.<\/p>\n
“The most exciting part is to see how whole families take part in the riding,” said ASG Events’ operational director Darren Herbst.<\/p>\n
He said participants and their families would have access to the 4 700ha nature reserve as day visitors, which is not generally permitted outside of scheduled events.<\/p>\n
Herbst said the event, which is based a mere 45-minute drive from Pretoria, continued to grow in popularity each year.<\/p>\n
“To get the serious cyclists out here is awesome, but our focus is to get families to come and enjoy the weekend.”<\/p>\n
He said the races on the Saturday were specifically designed to offer families riding options that suited their ability.<\/p>\n
As each race that formed part of the Bestmed Sondela Mountain Bike Classic occupied its own timeslot, Herbst said adults could also opt to build their own mini stage race.<\/p>\n
He said special combination price packages were available for those who wanted to combine either the 20km or 40km on the opening day with the marathon on the second day.<\/p>\n
After the adult events on the Saturday morning, three to five-year-olds will do battle on a specially built 500m track in the afternoon, while youngsters up to eight can tackle a 5km single-track course.<\/p>\n
“In my experience, there is no other mountain biking weekend that is as geared towards every member of the family,” said Herbst. “It’s a proper festival of riding combined with quality family time in a relaxed environment where the kids are as happy as the parents.”<\/p>\n
He said the feature race on the Sunday was scheduled to start at 9am to give participants ample time to drive to the venue on the morning of the race.<\/p>\n
The 20km and 40km events start at 11am and 8am respectively, with the kiddies taking to the dirt from 1pm.<\/p>\n
Proceeds go to the Sondela Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre.<\/p>\n
Visit www.asgevents.co.za to enter or for more information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recreational cyclists looking to mix it up with the pros have a small window of opportunity to enter the Bestmed Sondela Mountain Bike Classic that takes place near Bela-Bela in Limpopo on June 24 and 25. Entries for the annual festival – which offers 20km, 40km and kiddies’ races on the Saturday to complement 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":[3],"tags":[1743,2633,2657,2025,2634,1944,2658,2115,1945,1747,2373,2659,2656],"class_list":["post-6901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-more-sport","tag-asg-events","tag-bela-bela","tag-bestmed-sondela-mtb-classic","tag-entries","tag-limpopo","tag-mountain-bike","tag-mountain-bike-bash","tag-mountain-bike-news","tag-mountain-bike-race","tag-mtb","tag-mtb-race","tag-sondela-wildlife-rehabilitation-centre","tag-waterberg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6901","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=6901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}