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<\/a><\/p>\nTeam Spur’s 20-year-old XCO specialist Alan Hatherly faced stiff competition in the UCI Pro Elite Men\u2019s field, which featured the reigning U23 XCO World Champion, Kiwi Sam Gaze and Danish former Junior Cyclocross and XCO World Champion Simon Andreassen. Not to mention UCI World Cup stalwarts Manual Fumic, Marcel Guerrini, Mathias Fl\u00fcckiger, Nicola Rohrbach, Simon Stiebjhan and Martin Gluth as well as all the top local contenders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe start was pretty narrow, tricky and risky,\u201d Alan explains. \u201cI managed to navigate through there safely and got onto the first climb in about fifth,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
According to Alan he got to the first singletrack, well within his limit and realised some of the other guys were already breathing pretty hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI moved up into second there onto Sam (Gaze\u2019s) wheel.\u201d The two went under the start\/finish banner together and it was here that Alan put the hammer down and went into the lead. He dictated the racing for the entire second lap and managed to string out the chasing field, but then disaster struck:<\/p>\n
\u201cI looked back to see how far Manny (Fumic) was to our group and went off the track and into some sticks. I collected one that went into the derailleur and jammed the gears up,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew the tech zone was about 500m away, so I didn\u2019t bother stopping and just sprinted up and over the hill \u2013 it was dragging badly but it was enough to turn the pedals.\u201d He soldiered into the tech zone where Team Spur mechanic, JP Jacobs managed to quickly diagnose and fix the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy then I had lost about 20 seconds, so I went out really hard to try catch up to the front group.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alan did manage to make contact again, but just as he did Fumic, Fl\u00fcckiger and Rohrbach started attacking each other to try split it up before a powder-dry loose descent on the second part of the course. \u201cThat threw me way over the limit after my effort to catch them. So, from there it took a good few laps to regroup, take a few gels and find some energy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI managed to hammer the last two laps again and finish off with fifth place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sam Gaze crossed the line in first place followed by Fl\u00fcckiger and Rorhbach, with Fumic in fourth.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the whole I\u2019m really happy with the first cross-country of the year. There is still a lot of work to do, ahead of my first peak in around April\/May for Europe. But being the first South African home is really good for the National Series, and I take a lot of confidence from that.”<\/p>\n