The Playbiker season kicked off at the World Cup round 1 held in South Africa just over 2 weeks ago, 9-12 April.
The European riders Floriane Pugin (France) and Elisa Canepa (Italy) flew into Johannesburg with the team manager Romano Favoino and mechanic Fausto Rosas around midday on Monday before driving 6 hours to Pietermaritzburg to meet up with new Jr rider Shaun O’Connor (Australia).
 The other team rider Nathan Rankin (New Zealand) was unable to attend the first round due to an injury at his shoulder he has been carrying for some time and extra time was needed to make sure he would be 100% up to speed when he gets back on his bike for round 2.
After all of the team had met for the first time in the nice b&b Africa’s Eden (thanks Isolde – we felt at home), they were treated to some of the best lasagne in South Africa before catching up on some sleep after the long day of travelling, especially for Shaun who had flown for a total of 18 hours from Australia.
After the mechanic had worked around the clock the bikes were built the riders were up early and after a fantastic visit to the friends Patrick and Richard in the Morewood factory, it was off to Giba Gorge Bike Park, a cool local track for some testing on the brand new bikes. The test was important also for the choice of the Kenda tyres. Shaun preferred the Excavator while Floriane and Elisa opted for the El Moco.
All of the riders were very happy with the new bikes, the new Bos suspensions (thanks to Maxim for the help on the set-up) and with the light Fulcrum Wheels the riders felt that the bikes would be very competitive for the weekends racing.
Wednesday was when the racing officially began with the foot inspection on the course. After walking the long course it seamed that it was going to be fun to ride but hard to race. The top section was very steep before it carried a lot of speed into a flatter but extremely fast section before the pedalling. It was clear that this track was going to suit some riders more than others simply due to the pedalling section being significantly longer than any other world cup race in resent history.
 Thursday was the first day on course for the riders. However due to the extremely slow up lift the riders were struggling to get enough practice on course before the following days quilfying run. The girls were liking the track and Floriane had jumped the road gap while Shaun was also going well with many people impressed with his speed.
The next day was qualifying, a different scheudule meant that it was being held a day earlier and with a lack of practice meant many riders were qualifying after only riding the track 4 – 6 times. This unfortunately brought the Jr rider unstuck, Shaun had a very big crash in his quifying run and was out for the weekend fortunately he is ok and will be back fighting for round 2. The girls had better runs with Floriane qualifying into 5th position and Elisa into 13th.
Saturday there was little riding on course dispite the 4 hours of practice for the riders with overnight rain making the top section of the course almost impossible to ride. Many riders opted to have the day off or only do one run Elisa and Floriane did one run before going to the beach in Durban.
Sunday was then the action began, the morning’s practice heated with the top riders doing raced paced practice runs. The girls were feeling confident and both had good runs practice runs before a short break and it was into racing.
Floriane had a good run however said she found the pedalling section tough being one of the smaller girls in the field she was not suited to the track, she finished into 6th position. Elisa also had a good runut due to a flat tyre in the pedalling section, had finished just 15th. Even if the results weren’t those expected, after round 1 the team is however 7th in the World Cup standing for teams.
After this an early night was had before the 6 hour drive again back to Johannesburg. Shaun and Elisa were headed to Finale Ligure for some training while Floriane headed back to France.
 With one weeks recovering and training Shaun and Elisa travelled to a race about one hours drive from Finale, which was a SuperEnduro race.
The race format is very interesting with riders being given 1.5hours “transfer”time to ride to the top of the hill before racing 2 special stages down the hill, riding back to the pits and repeating this again.
The 2 special stages are basically made up of some fast downhill’s and some pedalling sections which combined make it perfect terrain for the team’s BOS equipped Iron Horse 6point bikes.
On the Saturday before the race Elisa and Shaun did shuttled runs of the 4 different enduro downhill tracks to get a little idea of where the course went and what to expect however only doing one run on each meant that they effectively raced the course’s without knowing exactly what was coming up.
Shaun’s training and fitness showed with him doing well on the up hills and also on the pedalling sections of the course this combined with downhill skills meant he did very well winning his category by a considerable margin and placing 6th overall, an excellent result for anyone’s first Super Enduro.
Elisa also did well taking out the women’s category in a dominating string of runs although she meantioned that it was a tough race choosing to use Flat pedals and 5.10 shoes due to the wet, raining conditions. This was the second victory in this format after the 1st SuperEnduro in San Bartolomeo, so Elisa is still leading the overall for women. The weekend was a success and the riders have now again returned to Finale for more training heading into World Cup Round 2.
Thank you again to all of our sponsors and check back again on our progress from round 2 of the World Cup Series which will be held in La Bresse in the 9th and 10th of next month.
Ciao!
Iron Horse-Kenda-Playbiker
Supported by: Kenda tyres, Pila MTB Planet, Bos-Engineering suspensions, Funn brakes & components, e-thirteen components, Fulcrum wheels, UFOplast, Vanadium Timepieces, FiveTen, Urthplay.com, Insight Production, Ferriani Security, RMS components selection, Qualyline. For more info and to contact us:
www.playbiker.com
team@ironhorsebikes.it |
