Africa-Press – Lesotho. African Dream Team MTB Lesotho team manager, Mark West, says he is happy with the performance of his riders at the last weekend’s SA XCO Cup Series in Parys, South Africa.
The African Dream Team is Lesotho’s first professional mountain bike (MTB) cycling team and the only African team to gain international MTB Team status from the International Cycling Union (UCI).
The SA XCO Cup Series + UCI Junior Series XCO Class 2 championship took place at the Koedoeslaagte Bike Park and featured four elite men riders from Lesotho with Tumelo Makae finishing highest in 19th position in a time of 1:39:09 hours.
Veteran Phetetso Monese, who competed in the 2016 Olympic Games, followed in 25th place. The team’s other riders were Lichaba West, who completed a lap before retiring with sickness, while Ramohanoe Ramohanoe failed to finish.
The SA XCO Cup Series is a national series that gives Southern African riders more opportunities to score valuable UCI points. It was the first time the African Dream Team competed in South Africa since 2019. West said the team did well given the long layoff and level of competition.
“What you have to realise is that South Africa is one of the top nations in the world in mountain biking (11th in the world) and one of their riders, Alan Hatherly, is ranked top 5 in the world,” he said.
“The standard of performance in South Africa is amongst the best in the world and more and more young riders are coming through, inspired by Hatherly and the likes. For that reason, I am happy with the performance of both Phetetso Monese and Tumelo Makae,” West added.
The 25-year-old Makae is viewed as the heir to the 37-year-old Monese. Makae was based in Switzerland under a Lesotho Olympic Athletes Solidarity Scholarship funded by the Lesotho National Olympic Committee (LNOC) before the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
His scholarship to train at the World Cycling Training Centre (WCTC) started in 2017 and ended last year, and although he did not qualify for the Olympics, Makae had the golden opportunity to have world-class coaching and training in Switzerland.
“The level of Phetetso has remained consistent from the last time he raced in that his laps were constant pace and he was not overlapped by the leaders. Tumelo has shown a little improvement, although we are still looking for more given the training he received in Switzerland,” West explained.
“I’m sure Tumelo’s improvement will come over the next few races as he gets used to conditions and pace of SA racing,” he added.
West also scoffed that suggestion routes in South Africa are designed to favour their riders ahead of Lesotho’s riders especially when they know Lesotho will be attending the event.
“I can assure you that South Africa route designers are not afraid of the strengths of Lesotho riders and developing courses designed to inhibit our progress, although the designers do tend to make ‘novelty’ features in the courses, which our riders are sometimes not comfortable with,” West said.
“For example, this last race had a stretch of ten or so big jumps in a row and our riders are not so comfortable on jumps. It is something we tried to work on in December/ January, but the heavy rains kept washing our course away,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Cycling Federation of Lesotho (CFL) is set to host the National Road Championships on March 12 at the Tikoe Industrial site. The criterium road bike event will feature riders from Under-10 to Masters.
Riders in the elite competition will have one hour to complete their laps and the winner will be crowned based on the number of laps he or she completes during that time.
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