Africa-Press – Lesotho. In this year’s Lesotho Sky annual race, the Lesotho first number one Mountain Bike (MTB) cyclist; Phetetso Monese will team-up with the Lesotho’s MTB young promising rider- Tumelo Makae under Alliance Insurance Company Team.
This eight year old International Cycling Union (UCI) recognized race is scheduled from the 24th September all through to the 29th September with 66 overall registered riders from ten countries.
This year’s destinations include; Semonkong, Ramabanta, Malealea and Roma. Number and origin of participants are as follows; 8-Lesotho, 37- South Africa, 1- Switzerland, 5- Germany, 1- Belgium, 1- Austria, 3- USA, 1- UK, 1- Netherlands, and 2-France.
Last year Phetetso, teamed-up with Stuart Marais from South Africa and earnedLesotho a silver medal. Phetetso confirmed that this time he will join forces with Makae.
Hesaid they are looking forward to earn Lesotho’s first ever gold medal in this race. This will be the first time the duo team-up. Makae who is now based in Switzerland under Tokyo 2020 Olympic Athletes Scholarship told Informative Sport he left Switzerland on Wednesday and arrived on Thursday.
Last week Friday, he represented the Mounted Kingdom at the 2018 UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) MTB World Championships held in Lenzerheide, Switzerland. He was competing in the Men’s U23 XCO where he obtained position 87.
Commending on that, he said he was not happy with his results as he was targeting to collect some points that will boost his chances to qualify for the 2020 Olympic Games.
“From the start line, I was doing well but I got a puncture on my second lap and the mechanical zone was way too far,” he said.
However, Makae is hopeful that joining forces with Monese is likely to earn Lesotho good results. Lesotho will also have Vodacom Lesotho Team made up of Likeleli Masitise (LES) and Bakang Ebudilwe from Botswana. Another team from Lesotho will be of Standard Lesotho Bank which will be represented by Malefetsane Lesofe and Katleho Manasi.
Prominent regarded riders at the Lesotho Sky 2018 will be Allard Basile (France, Team BMC, Olympic cyclist), Rémy Bourdon (France, Team RSA-Web, Olympic cyclist) and Phetetso Monese (Lesotho National Champion & Olympic cyclist).
The number of riders in the race seemed to have dropped from 85 to 66 and the Lesotho Sky Founder-Christian Schmidt said they had launched a new cycling race-Kingdom Enduro (a 3 day race) set for March 2019, therefore he said that riders who enjoy very hard and technical riding have joined this new event instead of Lesotho Sky.
