Sean Badenhorst

Originally posted by Mushy: I think education should come before any thing els!!! You mean 'anything else' right? Sean Badenhorst2008-05-29 09:44:19

School is over-rated. Well, finishing it in 12 years is. I say let the talented youngsters in all sports travel and compete abroad when the opportunity is there. When I was at school we weren't allowed to compete overseas. Repeating a year or two of school isn't necessarily a bad thing. How many really know exactly what they want to do with their lives when they finish school at age 18? And how many end up changing course after a couple of years because they'd rather pursue their own passion than the passion of their parents? Good luck to the youngsters on their 6-week European adventure. And well done to Gill Bezuidenhout of Mr Price Cycling Academy for making the dreams of so many young cyclists become reality! She's a true fairy godmother.

Just ride it there. Far more interesting... Could even get a book out of the adventure so you could actually make money getting it there. Ivor Keppler is an avid cyclist. He the founder and MD of Time Freight. I've used them to courier bikes before and they were great. Their details are here: http://www.timefreight.co.za/

Steve Madden is a great guy. He's Editor in Chief of Bicycling US. He was on the brink of leaving Bicycling about three years ago to work at Best Life magazine, but the whole Bike Town project changed his mind. And they made him a Senior Vice President of Bicycling... We've hosted him in Cape Town a few times and know for sure that langoustines could well be his staple diet if that ever became a possibility!

Expect to be sore the following day because you mostly pedal seated on a tandem (Jo McLoed and I only stood twice on average during the few Arguses we raced - on Chappies and on Suikerbossie). The tandem position/angle is also slightly different to your single bike. Don't judge tandem riding/racing on your first ride/race. With some conditioning it becomes lots of fun! Enjoy!

Women's cycling will only really grow in depth with improved safety. Probably plenty of naturally talented female cyclists in this country exercising in safe environments like gyms, swimming pools and squash and tennis courts. Make cycling safe and the number of female cyclists will increase. The Elite women's road racing on a national level has been very positive and aggressive this year! How many major races have been contested in a big bunch sprint? Not many... Agree with Murphy. Our next Olympic cycling medal will come from a woman. Or Sifiso!

Yes, Van Moorsel's story is a great one! She got three golds at the 2000 Olympics if I remember correctly, a great way to end her career. Gunn-Rita is also writing a good comeback story of her own. Just won a World Cup race this past weekend after being down with a long-term virus for almost a year! Hope she's back to peak form to defend her Olympic title. The Chinese have made a point of preventing her from even seeing the course! They have two or three women that will be in medal contention in Beijing...

Tennis isn't really a sport, is it? You get a second chance if you don't get your serve in, you can sit down on a chair and rest and drink cooldrink after every second game, you can stop the whole thing to get some physio and you don't even have to keep score because somebody on that tall chair shouts it out. I was there when Longo won her road race gold at the 96 Games. True legend! I don't think scrapbooking has taken off in France yet, that's why she's still racing. Other female cycling (road and MTB) legends include: Leontin Zijljaard van Moorsel, Julie Furtado, Gunn Rita Dahle-Flesjaa and of course Ann Caroline Chauson ? 10-time world MTB DH champ now going for BMX gold in Beijing!

Here's how it works in SA: The mainstream media cover events or sports that are the most popular. They even dedicate one or two staff members to cover those sports specifically, eg rugby, cricket, soccer etc. They do surveys from time to time to see which sports are the most popular among their target market and ensure they are covering the top 10 either every day or regularly. There is not one mainstream media platform that has a dedicated cycling journalist. You'll find that if there is someone that writes cycling for a newspaper, he/she also covers other smaller or 'Olympic' sports. 'The Argus' race gets decent media coverage because it attracts such a large number of participants and will be of interest to them, their families and their friends, which is quite a decent readership/viewership/listenership. Most of the cycling media stories are not written by any news media journalists, but by PR companies that have been contracted to the sponsor of an event or team to feed information to the media. This is necessary to help leverage the sponsorship and increase the sponsor's return on investment. It's also necessary because cycling just isn't big enough in this country to warrant a big enough dedicated mainstream media interest. Also, as Holy Roller pointed out, many mainstream media have downsized their staff complements dramatically in the past decade. There is a lot of syndication these days, especially between media owned by the same group, eg the Independent Group, which may use the same strong rugby story in the Cape Times, Mercury, Pretoria News and The Star on a Monday morning and then a strong soccer story that same afternoon in the Daily News and The Cape Argus... If cycling wants to raise its media profile, CSA needs to appoint a PR company to manage the flow of relevant information to the right media, at the right time! (news is only news for a day, maximum!). The Afrikaans newspapers, specifically, Burger and Beeld, cover cycling better than any other mainstream print media in SA. Dedicated cycling media should be covering the big cycling stories on their websites (much of it dates too much to be in the magazines). Burry's result at the weekend is one of the best performances ever by any South African cyclist. That should have been given exposure on dedicated cycling websites in SA. Sean Badenhorst2008-04-30 06:27:44

The official policy regarding track cycling is: SASCOC will consider selection of athletes who qualify through World Championships or World Cups where the athletes will be selected on merit.

Having covered an Olympic Games as a journalist and having seen the kind of politics that actually dominates everything, from selection, to support, to who carries the flag, to who should have carried the flag to who, was asked but didn't want to carry the flag, to who is covering up injuries, etc, etc, it's impossible, unfortunately, to not bring up politics when discussing the Olympic Games, especially team selection. Personally, I think all our Olympic athletes deserve their selection, whether it's via the 'back' or the 'front' door. They'd never send a donkey to this thoroughbred race. I just think that in terms of the Olympic team selection, South Africa has reached a welcome level of maturity by being able to select white athletes through the 'development' route and black athletes through the 'merit' route! I have pointed out the irony as well as shown how pleased I am about this. Now, just throw your support behind Sifiso so he can also qualify for selection. His website url is www.sifisonhlapo.com

I pointed out the irony of this because this country is so preoccupied with giving previously (or currently) disadvantaged people (mostly black) more opportunties, especially in sport, while advantaged (mostly white) people are getting disgruntled about losing out as a result. And here we have the complete opposite! Which, if you think about it, is actually really cool! Ironic, but cool!

Swimmers normally take their own coaches to the Games, if at all. Usually you just need a manager for the swimming squad as the coaches are all pretty unique in their ways and it's not easy for a swimmer to just adapt to a new coach for a couple of weeks. Big fencing team! Not surprised we're developed such good fencers with such high levels of crime in this country... Pity we don't have an Open-gates team. With the number of brilliant side-stepping white collar criminals in this country, we'd fill that podium. Or maybe Nigeria would get one of the medals...

Yes, Leon Scheepers is a highly-rated, but little-known SA cycling coach. Did coach Evans and De Villiers. Interestingly, Evans is now coached by David George, who is has a UCI Level 2 coaching qualification I think.

This is not the final cycling team, nor the final South African Olympic team. Various criteria need to met in different sports and different disciplines at different times. Track and Field team will be named later, as will a few other disciplines. Women's road riders will be named after this week's Tour of Chongming Island in China. That team is: Marissa van der Merwe, Cherise Taylor, Chrissie Viljoen, Lynette Burger, Robyn de Groot and Anriette Schoeman. I think we get two places in the Beijing road race. I reckon Marissa and Cherise should be our two for Beijing. Sifiso needs to make at least the quarter-finals at the BMX world champs at the end of May to qualify for Beijing. He's usually ranked 15-20th on average on the UCI rankings, but SA has to be in the top 11 countries to get an automatic start spot. At the moment SA is 12th (up from 19th last November!) and unlikely to overtake Venezuela, which is 11th and which has three hotshot riders compared to our one. So it all depends on his World Champs,which is pretty tough cos BMX racing is a bit of a lottery. One slip of the pedal and your race is over! How's this for irony: Sifiso, a black sportsman from a low income family, has to qualify for the Olympic Games through the 'front door' ie on merit in accordance with his and SA's world rankings. The rhythmic gymnast, Odette Richard and the archer fellow, both white from high income families, were able to qualify for the Games through the 'back door', having to win the Continental Champs titles in their respective sports, ie, not on merit! Two levels of qualification for Olympic Games: one on merit and applicable to countries which are deemed to be developed in terms of that particular sport and one in the interests of universality, where that country is deemed to be developing in terms of a particular sport. More reason to give Sifiso our support!

I'll join you on that downhill for some fun, Dirt Rider! Braking is over-rated. Live a little people...

You mean: 'pies are good for you to carbo load wiff...'

kingjreid, when I was 17 I also thought I knew everything and was bulletproof... I can understand you not wanting to take advice from your parents, cos that's just an instinctive thing. But these are people (not your parents), mostly more than double your age giving you some advice because they've learned through experience... Maybe there's something in that.

Oh ja. I forgot about those two...

You mean starting the TdF and Giro...

I agree with Shamus. I reckon they should increase the minimum age for the Epic and Ironman triathlons too. Young bodies (and minds) need time to develop and become conditioned to the rigours of major endurance events. To me, anyone under the age of 24 should go mad doing shorter distance races while they gain strength, experience and skill. You can do endurance events for the rest of your life, why do you want to rush into them?

Groot Lem, if you're anywhere as good as you were at the Sedgefield Fat Tyre Festival (circa 1992) with the microphone, then you should be first choice for Epic commentary, live at the event or TV footage voice over... One of the highlights of that Fat Tyre Festival was your commentary.

I use Firefox. When I reply to a post, the formatting is lost. And posting a pic, well maybe I'm just not looking in the right place, but I cannot find any obvious way to upload a pic.

I've worked on Apple Mac for the past 15 years. Just can't seem to 'click' with this website, whether it's replying to a previous post or trying to post a pic. I expect there's little that can be done since Mac users are the minority and programs aren't always Mac compatible. Anyone else have this hassle? Anything that can be done to solve it?

I find that the biggest difference for handling comes in the type of bar. A riser bar gives you a better feeling of control than a flat bar. Well, that's what I experience anyway. And it seems as though a slightly shorter stem makes for a less twitchy front end than a longer stem. No science, just my opinion.