01 Jul 2019

- Lebopo Mompe earned a convincing victory of the junior category at the Botswana Cycling Association’s MTB XCO National championships held on June 30.

The 17-year-old completed the four-lap course in 01:17:21 beating Bakang Mookodi, who finished the race at 01:24:20 and Letlamoreng Ikaneng, who completed the race at 01:27:31. 

Mompe opened a gap in the first two laps and slowed a bit down at the third lap when he had a slow puncture on the front wheel. 

He then pushed harder after the third lap and powered up getting a certain speed at the downhills but at the same time playing it safe to avoid blowing up before his four laps.

“I kept checking my opponents and by the time I started the fourth lap they were far behind me and I gave it my all and started opening a bigger gap,” said Mompe.

Sharing his experience of the African Continental MTB championships held in Namibia recently, Mompe, who enjoys MTB because of its challenging techniques, said the descends and ascends at home were relatively easy as compared to those in Namibia.

Mompe noted that in Namibia, they were using larger climbs, which exposed him to techniques on what to do especially where the downhill was bumpy.

For his part, Men’s Elite champion, Gontse Lethokwe embraced the route but appealed to the association to add more hills, drops and climbs to the MTB Championships to be at par with other countries’ MTBs, which mostly were UCI accredited. 

Lethokwe, who finished his six-lap course in 1:46:31, followed by Thato Madimabe  with a time of 2:01:54 and Abeng Malete at 2:04:10, indicated that by improving the race to international standards, athletes would be familiar when they had to compete and participate at internationally accredited races.  Lethokwe further said he was going all out to prepare for the All Africa Games.

Also, he appealed for sponsorship as he needs to go through intensive preparations. 

Although the route track was not as close to the track in Namibia that the cyclists experienced at the African Continental Championships, BCA secretary general Tlamelo Dube said the challenges were close enough.

In future, Dube said as an association, they plan to have a training camp on the same route for different categories. 

He said they intend to engage coaches and see how best to assist cyclists. 

Locally, he said there had been marathon races compared to cross country Olympics.

Additionally, he said they need to have more races and more areas that were challenging so that when local cyclists compete internationally, they did not appear as ordinary cyclists.

Dube also indicated that with the few MTBs in the country, there was a need to register races into the UCI and have them accredited. 

He said having UCI accredited races would attract more international cyclists, which would develop the standard of cycling in Botswana.

Meanwhile, Bakang Ebudilwe won the women elite category finishing four laps in 1:34:00, under 23 male Jameel Noor finished six laps in 2:04:38 followed by Sandile Slave 2:09:45 and Kao Ramahobo in third 2:18:38. Ends