Professional mountain biker Yolandi du Toit writes about her experience at this year’s Clover Lowveld Tour.
Graskop is a small forestry town perched on the edge of the Drakensberg escarpment. Besides forestry, it also attracts tourists to share in a few scenic wonders such as Gods Window, the Blyderivier Canyon and several picturesque waterfalls. This time around the main attraction was bicycles as riders showed up to participate in the fifth edition of the Clover Lowveld Tour.
The tour is one of the few remaining major road stage races in SA and welcomes all age categories, and genders to take part in the event. The elite men competed in a five day tour while the rest of us had four consecutive days of racing to look forward to.
Stage one – 27km time trail with 246m of climbing (Graskop – Hazyview)
The elite ladies started off with a 27km time trail from Graskop to Hazyview. With the starting point of the time trail lying at 1012m above sea level and the finishing point at 670m above sea level the route profile was only heading one way and that was gradually downhill. Juanita Venter put in a brilliant performance to take the stage win and her victory bodes well for the World Veteran Time Trial Championships which she will contest at the end of this month.
Stage two – 108km and 2144m of climbing (Graskop–Hazyview-Sabie-Graskop)
Day two started in the main street of Graskop, taking us on a circular route through Hazyview and Sabie to finish back in Graskop after a tough 108km. This stage also proved to be the ‘queen stage’ (hardest stage) of the tour and included a total of 2144m of climbing.
Stage three A – 7.3km Hill Climb with 493m of climbing (Kowyn’s pass)
On the Saturday we had two stages to complete and the morning stage started off with a hill climb time trail up Kowyn’s pass. By definition time trailing is always hard, but I actually enjoyed the stage. I really like the solitude of an individual time trial and it’s also one of the reasons why I enjoy mountain biking so much.
Stage three B – 85km and 1533m of climbing (God’s Window laps)
The afternoon stage consisted out of four laps of the well-known God’s window viewing point loop. I went into the stage sitting in 4th place and really wanted to make up some of the time I lost on the previous day.
Stage four – 96km with 1629m of climbing (Graskop – Blyderiver road – Graskop)
The final stage of this year’s tour took us out and back on the Blyderiver road. Lesson learned from the previous day I decided to race smart instead of racing with my heart (although I prefer the latter). This helped me to save a lot of energy to win the stage in an uphill dash to the finish line. I can’t remember when last I sprinted for a victory and I was very happy to finish the tour on such a high note.
Read the full blog here.
