Swazi Frontier –Team Turvs Race Report 2010

[Andrew Clayton]

The Swazi Frontier - http://www.theswazifrontier.sz (race organiser Brett Foss - [e-mail] )

From a Team Turvs perspective, what stark contrast to the slick, well executed performance of last year! For the Team Turvs’s it was three days of bitter warfare featuring wipe outs, injury and technical abortions of biblical standards – and that is why we love the sport. It always has something to dish up for the lads. But let’s not miss the point here, another sublime year for the pre-eminent mountain biking event in Africa. Let’s take you through it, cos if you weren’t there, you should have been. It went a little something like this....

Day One

Started like most others, though it has to be said the tempo was down from years past. I would attribute that to the absence of the likes of Yolande “White Lightning” Speedy and her sidekick Paul “The Speed Midget” Cordes. Word is they just can’t take losing to the Pipe and The Tweek year after year at the Swazi. Being such a blot on their riding CV’s they chose rather to pop off to Warmbad for a dirty weekend. Rumour abounds in the cycling world they are sorting each other out, niiice! Imagine how small their children will be, but I digress. The romantic mini twins were replaced by something far more menacing in 2010, the dangerous duo of David and Davidson from Kenya. Don’t be fooled by their big smiles and pleasant demeanour, these guys take some beating it has to be said. One of them got kicked off his bike by a horse during the Jo’berg to Sea, not one word of a lie, dismissed the incident as inconvenient and rode on to a second place overall. Dressed in green one piece suites and built a lot like a Kreepy Krawly hose, but without the ridges or the big flobbery rubber bit at the end, these guys look like they either spend their lives on a bike or not eating. Either way, it translates into lean unadulterated speed. As it happened, the potential of this team was somewhat restricted by a combination of their lack of local course knowledge and a flock of technical problems, not that this kept them off the podium.

Having set the scene, a sedate pelican (Swazi slang for peloton – these okes aren’t strong on French) set forth. The writing was on the wall early on when my partner, The Pipe, was lagging nicely behind out the starting gate. Turns out we had withdrawn a lot more from the training fitness account than we had deposited in recent years, and were reaping the rewards. Despite this, we managed to hang on to the front of the ragtag pack. Apart from the distinctly slow descent abilities of Norm and Grant from team Baggy Pant (Hoss), things were fairly uneventful. Uneventful if you consider me being spear tackled by my new bike and body slammed into the unyielding Swazi turf as uneventful. The clowns from the coastal Team 67789320⅞²-2.co.uk (don’t ask!) with driving skills to match, slammed on their brakes just in front of us on a briskish descent. With nano seconds to react, I did what any seasoned biker would do, and hit the front brake as hard as I could. The ensuing somersault with bike attached to my feet was up there with the more traumatic accidents of my life. Landing as planned on my right shoulder followed by driving the oversized, genuine imitation “Lezyne” multi tool through my back, there were very few molecules of air left in my carcass. The Pipe thought that it was all over for us. It took my diminutive brain a while to readjust, so before it did, I climbed back on my bike and like the drummer from Def Leppard, I continued with one arm. Talk about a personality remover, the chatting ended right there and I just wanted to go home. Luckily we only had 45kms left and the equivalent of Tenzing Norgay’s (born, get this; Namgyal Wangdi) favourite Tibetan mountain left to climb. And so it was that we entered the uphill “make the Alpe D’Huez look like a the Spruit” stage of Day 1. Thankfully most of the compo dropped off and it was just us and the coastal cuzzins cruising up front.

My name’s not Kwazimodo, but I still had a serious hunch that something was missing from this equation. I was right, the East African turbo grasshoppers had fixed their tyres for the fifteenth time and were on the move. They came past us like we had swapped in our KTM and S Works for a set of granny walkers. And not those cool ones with the quick release dashboard either, but those walking stick wanabee walkers with the sprout of mini feet at the bottom. We successfully gave chase, for about 36 seconds. The Pipe said he was blowing so we had to settle back to our new found octogenarian “racing” pace. What had happened though, is that we had dropped the coastal lot and were in second spot. Then Team Green punctured again and we were up front. We hung in on some severe climbing to take the tape cruising into Bulembu. Apart from my bleating like a school girl for a medic at the finish, things were good again in the Swazi hinterland

Night One

Bulembu gets better and better every year. An astonishing history, this once uninhabited mining city has been rejuvenated and, apart from Fossil’s ridiculously inadequate motor bike skills, is easily the highlight of each year’s visit to Swazi. That evening consisted of some great humour in the race briefing, a huge feed and me seeing how many drugs I could find to ease the paining in my shoulder. Apparently I had torn my AC joint, I thought that was some kind of rock band from the 80’s, so stuffed myself full of anti inflammatories and cortisone and hoped for the best.

Day Two

Feeling about 102 years old, we were greeted with a misty and rainy Bulembu with slick surfaces to complement what is normally a tricky start. We successfully navigated the wet steps out of town and a fairly solid climb out of Bulembu. It was the usual suspects up front. The Danger men were clearly the grasshoppers, kitted out with new tires to complement their lumo green one piece racing suites, these were going to be the men to beat. Four pairs of bikes crested together and then started the festive forest downhill on the way to Mganda Valley, the place of one million river crossings. The Kenyan pickup sticks being downhill shy, it was the Baggy Pant, the Coastal Cuzzins and Team Turvs’s out front through the epic single track section. Great riding to be sure, fast sweeping single track and once again things were going well up until the hunt for Piggs Peak Hotel. In the closing stages, with the grasshoppers and us leading the pack, the collective navigational ability of the lead group amounted to zero. We took a few wrong turns but were finally on track for home. Placed nicely with the danger men from Kenya we were feeling pretty good and hoping to right the wrongs of the abortive Day 2 bogeymen of years past. It was at that point that my rear derailleur popped. So with limited single speed capability and a lot of standing we maintained our pace and sight of the grasshoppers. Then, with 6kms to go, the derailleur shredded itself. I was now on foot, and with not one shred of humour left in the general area, I took the loser run into Piggs Peak. With a few pushes and a pull from the Pipe we made it in to the comfort of Swazi’s finest gambling establishment. Fourth place was our lot for that day, the first time we had ever finished behind okes that rode in beach baggies – self esteem was about as low as a coelacanth mine shaft operator. Nevertheless, we were still in second place overall, 4 seconds behind the grasshoppers, and we started scheming...

Night Two

What a thing, the truck with all our kit had gotten stuck in the mud during the course of the day, so we were all kitless at Piggs Peak. Fantastic to watch the whole place get transformed into a Toga Party where every cyclist in the place was sporting nothing more than a few towels and a beer. Surely the Toga theme will become tradition in this fine race. As my brother always says, clothing is there to be removed. What humour and hospitality from the lads at the hotel and the riding mob lapped up the luxury.

Over about 2.5 kilograms of dinner, a couple of mils of cortisone and some strapping for the wobbly shoulder, the Pipe and I were planning our next move while the mechanic from Dunkeld Cycles tried to rebuild my rear derailleur out of discarded parts. I could not escape the irony of it all, turns out we had to structure our fight back for the podium around our superior descending skills. This from the team the spends more time upside down or in the bush than on the bike. It was usually our game to win on the uphills, but with the advent of the Kenyan Daves, the realm of high gravity was clearly theirs alone. And so it came to pass that on the third day.....

Day Three

It was not to be! Amongst rumours of torrential rain and cataclysmic climactic activity, it was a relief to have day three dawn cool and calm. If the weather Gods were playing along, I need to have a word with the God of Shimano. That deity is a proper snapperhead, or if He isn’t, He certainly has it in for me. The Pipe and I were doing our best to pace ourselves and not eat all our sarmies at first break like Lee John always does. Tucked in nicely behind the usual suspects, “Team Coastal Bad Driving,” “Kenya Green” and the lads from Dunkeld, things were going fairly well apart from a few mechanical complaints emanating from my rear derailleur once again. I was trying to treat it with the mechanical sympathy that it had not earned, ensuring I removed any grass or stick activity at the first opportunity. Suddenly the range of gears available was drastically reduced, but not wanting to drop off the lead pelican, I was forced to continue. And continue I did, until the Gods of Shimano belched forth with great wailing of cables, shearing of parts and gnashing of little pointy bits. The stuff we needed at the back for the chain to go round had self destructed. And like so many of our taxi operating brethren, we were forced to the side of the track to beg and steal bits from passing commuters. Our hope of podium time was nothing more than a distant memory, like Apartheid, only without PJ Powers (bet you didn’t know her real name was Penelope Jane Dunlop – who calls their child that?) belting out “Jabulani!” We were pretty far from jabula (isiZulu for “well chuffed”), while the Pipe was trying to reconstruct my bike in the postman configuration – no gears. We tried that for a while, without success. Then in a flash of rare brilliance, my partner rebuilt the derailleur with a combination of cable ties, hair elastics from his current-future-ex nubile and some chewing gum (okay the last one is an exaggeration) and my bike was kind of working again.

Just to put you in the picture as to how much time we had lost, Narcotix cruised up to us tripping as always. “Hey Tweaky,” he bleated in his subtle way, “if I had known you would be this far back I would have packed a reefer and a six pack!” Times were bad, this is about as low as one can be, sharing imaginary contraband with Narcotix at the back of the field in the middle of Swaziland with a bike running about as well as my first ever BMX one-speed that was rebuilt from scavenged parts. The race was over, but not for the Pipe, he was still on a mission. So we were off once again, and like Julius Malema on his birthday, we were eating up the rear of the field like cake. Eish, my mate made me pay. The rest of the day felt long, like an ANC parliamentarian’s criminal record, but it was soon to end. We made it home amongst some superb retro slamming beats from the DJ (this music quality was short-lived – see Night Three below). What a relief to be in the tranquil surrounds of Maguga Lodge, multiple beers in hand and some good mates.

Night Three

The usual kaleidoscope of too much beer, Fossil’s debrief, acceptance speeches, fines and humourless CycleBad™ riders in matching, cling-tight cycling gear (where do they get that stuff?). Festivity and childishness levels were starting to escalate despite the DJ’s best efforts to dampen our enthusiasm with classic winner tunes such as “Never gonna give you up” by rock legend Rick Astley. Highlights of the evening were “inebriated indoor BMX trix” and gangsta dance moves led by Dangerous Dave 1 from Team Kenya. Unfortunately the weak beats emanating from the inertia maimed DJ Nick “The Narcoleptic” won the day and even the most ardent party animals were left to crash. Though not before shoplifting some well earned ice creams from the establishments open fridge.

What a peach of an event once again. It improves every year and is seemingly becoming an annual piece of a lot of our calendars – and for good reason! Undeniably the most enjoyable mountain bike event on our Southern Tip. Viva Swaziland, Viva!