{"id":19261,"date":"2015-09-28T06:45:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T05:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/2015\/09\/28\/matt-beers-talks-about-his-win-at-the-karoo-to-coast-mountain-bike-challenge-r3556\/"},"modified":"2023-02-08T09:21:06","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T09:21:06","slug":"matt-beers-talks-about-his-win-at-the-karoo-to-coast-mountain-bike-challenge-r3556","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/matt-beers-talks-about-his-win-at-the-karoo-to-coast-mountain-bike-challenge-r3556\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Beers talks about his win at the Karoo to Coast Mountain Bike Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s really special to me,\u201d commented an ecstatic Matt Beers after winning the Pennypinchers Lions Karoo to Coast Mountain Bike Challenge on Sunday 20th September. \u201cI’ve always known about the race living in Knysna – so winning it is pretty crazy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Beers who recently signed with the RED-E Cannondale team crossed the line ahead of Adriaan Louw (Contego) and some 4300 other cyclists on the 16th edition of the iconic event. The event is owned by the Lions Clubs of Knysna and Uniondale. The major beneficiary of this event is the SightFirst Project for sight restoration operations in the Southern Cap and Karoo, for those who cannot afford them. The Lions Clubs also support the South African Guide Dog Association and many other positive projects.<\/p>\n

\"ccs-62657-0-17368900-1443422741.jpg\"<\/a>Matt Beers Karoo to Coast 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beers went into the race as something of an underdog, just the way he likes it. \u201cI love being a dark horse,\u201d he said, \u201cthere\u2019s less hype around you and you can stay more relaxed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The racing was hot and fast right from the gun as Gert Heyns (Scott) and Beers hit the Wapad Climb. \u201cWe hit the first climb very fast just to see how the others would respond,\u201d Beers explains. \u201cThere was a small group which stayed together for a while. We where all individual riders there where no teammates amongst the riders so was quite a lot of looking at each other seeing who would set the pace.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group eventually started working together near the end and the subsequent pace saw a few guys get dropped. \u201cAs we hit the bottom of Gouna I knew this is where its all going to start going crazy,\u201d Beers said. Five riders were together at the time and it was Heyns who set the early pace into the climb. This shattered the group a bit but after some chasing everything came back together again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started going for it because I knew the only way to get rid of some of the guys was to get to the top and of the climb before them and then they wouldn’t catch us on the descent Alan Gordon, Adriaan Louw and myself got away from the others at the top and started time-trailing it along the tar road to the finish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beers and Louw managed to get a gap on Gordon and continued to build the pressure. \u201cI just went as hard as I could, sitting on the front with Adriaan behind me because I knew he would out-sprint me at the end if we went around the corner together. I just pushed as hard as I could just to get a bike-length gap and the I knew I would be able to hold it till the finish and it ended up working.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was over the moon!\u201d<\/p>\n

For more details, photographs and results please view www.karootocoast.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s really special to me,\u201d commented an ecstatic Matt Beers after winning the Pennypinchers Lions Karoo to Coast Mountain Bike Challenge on Sunday 20th September. \u201cI’ve always known about the race living in Knysna – so winning it is pretty crazy,\u201d he said. Beers who recently signed with the RED-E Cannondale team crossed the line […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":46743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[222,155],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-19261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","tag-karoo-to-coast","tag-matt-beers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19261"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=19261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}