Max Knox and Brandon Stewart (DCM) made sure that they were the first winners of the Mankele Three Towers mountain bike tour in the Lowveld when they beat Francois Theron and Philip Buys (Garmin adidas) in the last stage.

The organizers should be well satisfied with the titanic battle between the riders from DCM and Garmin adidas.

Knox and Stewart totally dominated the first stage and won by about five minutes.

The 2nd stage will be remembered for Theron and Buys’ strong comeback. Not only did they manage to win the stage over 80 kilometers, but they also managed to wipe out the DCM riders’ five-minute advantage.  This meant that the two teams started the third stage (50 kilometers) on exactly the same time.

On Saturday Knox and Stewart proved to be too strong for the Garmin-adidas riders by out riding them on the first serious climb.  From then on they just continued to make the pace really hard, thereby ensuring that any attempted counter-attack by Theron and Buys would be to no avail.

Knox said afterwards that the tour was an exciting tactical battle.

“I think it boiled down to each team using its strength to its own advantage. Francois and Philip are very good technical riders.  This allowed them to be quite fearless going downhill at a really fast pace, even taking some risks, in an effort to make up time.

“Brandon and I are the better climbers. At every serious climb we went flat out, trying to put as much pressure as possible on Francois and Philip.  And it worked.

“We knew, even before the beginning of the third stage, that we could not afford to take any risks because the shorter stage suited Francois and Philip better.

“Therefore we made sure that we warmed up properly before the race, which enabled us to attack during the first climb. After about 4 kilometers of hard riding, we managed to drop them, but there was no way that we were going to ease up until we have crossed the finishing line.”

This coming Saturday (3 October) the Clarens Marathon, the 6th in the MTN National Series, will take place.