rd<\/sup> at the SA Championship, may also be a rider to watch.<\/p>\nAs he pointed out, he has only recently begun to race seriously again, while most of the riders have been competing weekend after weekend.<\/p>\n
He hopes that the fact that his legs are still fresh will count in his favour.<\/p>\n
Some years ago, when it was still a three-day stage event, Evans won at MTN Rooiberg.<\/p>\n
For Hanco Kachelhoffer, Saturday will be the official beginning of his career as a mountain biker.<\/p>\n
He signed a contract last week to ride for EAI Solutions\/Specialized. According to Knox, Kachelhoffer, who is actually no stranger to mountain biking, might just cause a big surprise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI seriously started cycling when I was 12. My first bicycle was a mountain bike and during the first six years I spent more time riding on dirt roads and single tracks than I did riding on tarred roads.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason why I decided to commit to road cycling was because the concept of teamwork appealed to me. But seeing that mountain biking has been one of the fastest growing sports during the past few years, it provides so many opportunities for riders.<\/p>\n
According to Kachelhoffer, the main difference between road cycling and mountain biking is that in a road race a rider can get by even if he is not feeling well.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just ride in the bunch and save your energy. In mountain biking you can never hide away. You just have to bite the bullet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I should be able to cope because I was quite good at individual time trials. I have won three South African titles.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a time trial it is also just you and your bike. To excel you must be able to push yourself to the absolute limit and ignore all pain. The same goes for mountain biking. I think I will have an advantage over other road cyclists turned mountain bikers, because I will not be intimidated by racing through tricky technical sections. I actually love it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been training on my mountain bike during the whole of December. I rode in and around George, parts of the Attakwas, and on Cape Pioneer and old Epic routes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Max Knox (EAI Solutions\/Specialized) is the man to beat this weekend. This will be the challenge that every pro-elite rider, who has aspirations of winning the MTN ultra-series overall, will have to face when he lines up for the start of the MTN Rooiberg ultra Marathon on Saturday (15 June). Knox has been in awesome […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":53335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[522,5285,904],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-21773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","tag-max-knox","tag-mtn-rooiberg","tag-national-mtb-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21773","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21773"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=21773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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