Cycling News and Race Results

Yolande Speedy, South Africa’s best hope for a top finish in the Elite women's race at next week’s opening round of the UCI RockyRoads Mountain Bike World Cup in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, crashed and broke her wrist while training on the course on Wednesday afternoon.

Yolande Speedy, winner of the first round of the 2012 South African National Cross-country Series last weekend, showed on Saturday that she’s able to win in all conditions when she claimed first place in the Elite & Under-23 women’s race at the first round of the 2012 Momentum Health UCI XCO Series at Giba Gorge, in the KwaZulu-Natal province.

Beijing Olympians Burry Stander and Yolande Speedy showed that four years later they’re still South Africa’s top mountain bike racers in the Olympic Cross-Country (XCO) discipline, winning the Elite men and women’s races respectively at the opening round of the 2012 South African National Cup Series in Durbanville, near Cape Town on Saturday.

“Yolandé Speedy (MTN-Qhubeka) will win the MTN Hilton Dirt Fest.” This is wat Paul Cordes (MTN-Qhubeka) predicted shortly after the Nissan Down and Dirty mountain-bike event in Centurion and his pronouncement proved to be prophetic.

‘Champion versus champion‘.  This is what the MTN Hilton MTB Dirt Festival marathon race for women, that will take place on Saturday (24 September), will probably boil down to.

On Saturday (27 August) Yolandé Speedy (MTN-Qhubeka) sent out an early warning to her rivals by finishing second in the MTN Diemersfontein marathon.

It would be a really big surprise if one of the riders from MTN-Qhubeka does not win the MTN Attakwas women’s ultra-marathon (Oudtshoorn to Mosselbay) on Saturday (15 January).

The MTN-Energade riders certainly know how to win races.

A quick study of this year’s results tells the story.  So far this year MTN can boast with 100 victories and still counting.  During the past weekend (23-24 October) it was the privilege of An-Li Pretorius to achieve MTN-Energade’s 100^th victory of the year when she won the Jacaranda Satellite race.

One of the most exciting rivalries in South African mountain biking resumes on Saturday when Yolandé Speedy (MTN-Energade) and Eszther Erdelyi-Cluer (Jeep) get on their bicycles to race the MTN Ride Crater Cruise.

On Saturday (17 July) Yolandé Speedy (MTN-Energade) showed that she still reins supreme as the ‘Queen’ of South African women’s mountain biking, when she won the MTN South African Cross-country title at the Fountains in Pretoria.