Pierre Smith writes about his victory at this year’s Pennypinchers Silverstar Mountain Bike Challenge.
The Silverstar MTB race is a very popular race based in Krugersdorp and attracts about 1500 riders. My goal was to defend my title from last year but I knew it would be a difficult task.
The start of 2014 was a very tough time for me with a big injury keeping me out of action for 12 weeks.
Saturday’s win meant a lot for me and gave me a lot of confidence heading into the last part of the season. A few pre race interviews and comments added a little bit of pressure on me to successfully defend my title. The quality of riders improved a lot from last year with guys like Guylin VD Berg, Henry Uys and Julius Cobbet in the mix.
My tactics was to hammer it in the early stages to put the pressure on the other riders. With most of the tough climbs inside the first 15km I knew any gap can make a difference and soon it was only Guylin and myself in front of race.
The two of us worked our way through the kilos in pursuit of the finish line. The race had some very nice technical sections, fast flowing singletracks, fast downhills and some steep short climbs to get the heart rate up.
About 10km to the finish the third place rider made a big comeback and both of us realized we have to push the pace a bit higher. With my route knowledge from last year I recognized most of the section in the last few kilometers and I just hammered it up the small climbs and trying to lead the two of us into the last section of singletrack before the very tricky finish arrives.
The finish had a long fast tar downhill with two extremely sharp turns at the end. I managed to get myself first going into the tricky corners, with only about 10m of sprinting left after that I successfully defended my title. Taking the win just two seconds ahead of second place rider Guylin. See you guys next year where I will try to make it a hat-trick of wins.
I would like thank all the sponsors for all their support throughout the year without great sponsors it would have been nearly impossible to live my dream. – pierresmurfsmith.blogspot.com
