SA Road Championship 2025

[Madone69]

It's quite disgusting that not a word had been said about the new SA Champion ...crowned this past weekend. History made...🥳

[DieselnDust]

Patiently awaiting the news report on SA’s

[Madone69]

[Danger Dassie]

Can’t fault CSA’s on the day coverage, caught bits of it on their social channels, and the photo galleries. 

However the whole SA Road Champs seems to have been heavily under the radar this year. Doesn’t seem to have been much interest or drive behind the event. Also with Tankwa on at the same time.

[Jimmy 2.0]

From what I heard it was heavy negative racing in the elite men's bunch. Riders ganging up and kept on blocking Alan, Stefan and Reinardt. No one did their turnsnon the front except those 3

[Jimmy 2.0]

23 minutes ago, Danger Dassie said:

Can’t fault CSA’s on the day coverage, caught bits of it on their social channels, and the photo galleries. 

However the whole SA Road Champs seems to have been heavily under the radar this year. Doesn’t seem to have been much interest or drive behind the event. Also with Tankwa on at the same time.

Unfortunately road raving is on a downward spiral. MTB pro racing has a bigger following than road. The big mtb event's pay for media crew including a helicopter to be there as it draws sponsors and follower's to the event.

[me100]

Vaalweekblad has an article: https://www.citizen.co.za/vaalweekblad/news/news-news/2025/02/09/matthews-wins-sa-road-cycling-title/

Does any country have live coverage and big news reports for their national championships? Not sure calling it disgusting is warranted.

[DieselnDust]

1 minute ago, Jimmy 2.0 said:

Unfortunately road raving is on a downward spiral. MTB pro racing has a bigger following than road. The big mtb event's pay for media crew including a helicopter to be there as it draws sponsors and follower's to the event.

maybe in South Africa it is in a downward spiral in terms of coverage. This is not an international trend hence Alan's move to a road team for 2025 and 2026. This country is stage race ber....door.....nerd..... and possibly the only place in the world where beer is marketed as a recovery drink for endurance athletes and therein lies the rub. Sponsors get more marketing miles out fat blokes with a youtube channel than lean roadies racing around a circuit for a national title. I'm guessing BikeHub is waiting for report from participants before compiling a synopsis of events while Other news channels have already covered Daniyal's historic win. BH was at Tankwa the weekend to give us a day by day account of that major international XTMS event. They can't be everywhere at once either.

[DieselnDust]

19 minutes ago, me100 said:

Vaalweekblad has an article: https://www.citizen.co.za/vaalweekblad/news/news-news/2025/02/09/matthews-wins-sa-road-cycling-title/

Does any country have live coverage and big news reports for their national championships? Not sure calling it disgusting is warranted.

I think the OP refers mainly to it not be mentioned on BikeHub yet. But as I pointed out above, they can't be everywhere at once and it possibly as simple as a major INTERNATIONAL Race taking a little of precedence over a NATIONAL event, ....so resources and hence i agree maybe "Disgusting" is on the strong side. Disappointing certainly

[babse]

Respect to Daniyal

 

That's some decent names up there. Negative racing is part of bike racing. Someone had to take their chances.

 

@Sid the Sloth kudos on podium. Keen to share in on "negative racing" ? 

[DieselnDust]

1 hour ago, Jimmy 2.0 said:

From what I heard it was heavy negative racing in the elite men's bunch. Riders ganging up and kept on blocking Alan, Stefan and Reinardt. No one did their turnsnon the front except those 3

thats what I heard as well and the Instagram feed didn't do it justice. Thats road racing though. At a Nationals event alliances are important. It was the only way local lads were going to have a fair crack at the title against their internationally contracted brothers. Isolate them and attack. That 13 man break away was he winning break because of those alliances. If Alan, Stefan, Reinhardt and Luke could have had some sort of agreement there could have been a scenario where any one of them could have won the Elite title.

AS it played out its a great result for Daniyal who has been hanging in the shadows for a couple of years and just no cracking the top step because he doesn't have a big team. What would be disgusting is if he doesn't get a spot one of the local "big teams"

[Nick]

It's quite disgusting that the women's road and all the time trial champions have been completely overlooked in this thread! 😇

[W@nted]

Well at least Alan will be able to wear the SA jersey during the world tour TT’s. The fact that there were only 5 entries in the mens elite TT champs is quite an indication of the sad state of SA road cycling at the moment😢

[Danger Dassie]

2 hours ago, DieselnDust said:

I think the OP refers mainly to it not be mentioned on BikeHub yet. But as I pointed out above, they can't be everywhere at once and it possibly as simple as a major INTERNATIONAL Race taking a little of precedence over a NATIONAL event, ....so resources and hence i agree maybe "Disgusting" is on the strong side. Disappointing certainly

Tankwa also has a major sponsor and progressional event organiser. National and provincial events have a layer of bureaucracy limiting the events.

BH by default don’t really do event coverage, no other cycling media really bother or budget for someone to do a report either. 
Last year Bike Network did a brief summary/overview and BSA apparently used a finish line shot of Gibbons.

[Danger Dassie]

1 hour ago, Nick said:

It's quite disgusting that the women's road and all the time trial champions have been completely overlooked in this thread! 😇

On that note though, what a win for S’annara Grove. Proper sprint action from her, Preen and Keep. 
Hopefully good form for Preen if she continues on to the Lifetime Series again this year. Did so well last year. 

[Nick]

7 hours ago, Danger Dassie said:

BH by default don’t really do event coverage, no other cycling media really bother or budget for someone to do a report either. 

Correct. We've never done original results coverage. However, should the relevant organisation have sent us a suitable press release, we'd have published it. Like we did with Tankwa Trek over the weekend.

CSA used to be on the ball with press releases a few years back. Inthebunch were really good at keeping tabs on race results too.