Four Year Wait For Stewart Worth It For The Win

Race Report : News Center

It took a long time!  To be precise it was four years in the making, but eventually Brandon Stewart (DCM) managed to win the Jeep Hill2Hill Race (over 105 kilometers) in KwaZulu-Natal over the weekend.

Stewart had reason to be excited about his victory.  During the previous three years he had to be satisfied with playing second fiddle to Burry Stander every time.

“Geez, this was the one race I really, really wanted to win, because it was on my home turf.  Well, now I have done it!  I guess you can say it is another one to tick off in the big black book.  I also owed it to my supporters to win the Hill2Hill.  Many of them knew how important winning the Hill2Hill was to me and they came specially to support me.

“What makes this victory even more special for me is that, apart from Burry Stander and Kevin Evans, all South Africa’s top riders were in action.”

Listening to Stewart talking about his victory, it becomes clear that it was due to brilliant team tactics.

At the first climb, Max Knox (DCM) started to make the pace really hard.  This led to all the top contenders, with the exception of Marc Bassingthwaighte (Garmin-adidas), being dropped in the first ten kilometers.

Bassingthwaighte managed to stick with Stewart and Knox for a few kilometers but then he was also left behind. For the next 50 or so kilometers, the two DCM-riders worked in tandem to ensure that no other rider caught up with them.

With his job done, Knox started to slow down.  This meant that Stewart time-trialled the last 40 kilometers on his own to win.

A modest Knox afterwards refused to take any credit for Stewart’s victory.  According to him he did what he was expected to do and he was glad that everything worked out for the best.

When asked if he expected to kill off all of the main contenders so early during the race, Knox replied in his usual diplomatic manner that he reckons the early start might have counted in their favour.

“It does not often happen that a mountain bike race starts at 06:00.  The early start meant that many of the riders did not have time to warm up properly.”

Ben-Melt Swanepoel (Specialized) finished 2nd, with Knox 3rd, Bassingthwaighte 4th and Francois Theron (Garmin-adidas) 5th. The time-gap between Knox and Theron was only 53 seconds.