Nico Bell has reached top form recently, claiming three race victories in just the last month. And the fact that he is an older rider doesn’t seem to be hampering his performance.
NAD Pro’s Bell, 34, won the overall title of the joBerg2c at the end of April before winning the first Trailseeker Series event in Buffelsdrift a week later. Last week he claimed the overall spoils in the sani2c Race.
NAD Pro’s Nico Bell has reached top form recently and the fact that he is an older rider doesn’t seem to be hampering his performance. Photo: Charmain van Zyl
Despite being older than most of the other riders he competes against, Bell said he felt stronger now than ever before.
“Obviously as elite riders many of them peak a lot earlier in their respective careers, but for me I only reached my best later,” Bell told In the Bunch.
“Most of the time guys would peak between about the ages of 28 and 32, but right now I feel I am stronger than I was before.
“I have become wiser, I have been able to learn from past mistakes and I know to put in my training.
“When you are young you are often too eager and you over-train, while not always knowing specifically what to do in races.”
He said he had to put in a lot of work to get where he was today.
“Experience, together with a lot of hard work and dedication, got me to this point. Obviously the older you get, the more work you have to put in.
“It is just [important] to be clever about it and not just train hard because you can.”
Despite his successes over the course of the year Bell said it had been a “long” season thus far.
“Preparation for 2018 already began on the first of December 2017,” he said. “We started the year off with the Mpumalanga Tour where [teammate] Matt Beers won, before we set our focus on all of the mountain-bike events.
“Cape Epic was our main goal. Unfortunately we did not get the result there that we wanted. But I think we have shown that we are a mountain-bike and a road team. It was always great to win.”
Bell, who was crowned national MTB marathon champion last year, said he was still concerned about the level of mountain-biking in South Africa.
“There are a lot of mass competitions, but there is room for improvement,” he said. “There are a lot of riders taking part in races like the sani2c; they do look after us pros.
“We like to support those events as well, but there are obviously more races overseas with higher levels. However, we need higher levels of support if we want to go over there.
“South African sponsors, for example, would not cover your expenses to go overseas because there would not be exposure for them there.
“For me, we are happy to give New African Development [NAD] exposure here, while still doing the odd race overseas.”
