SA Road Championship 2025

[ChrisF]

3 hours ago, J Wakefield said:

If you let a group of 13 go up the road with 6.5min thats not negative, thats not being able to read a race.

If you have a team mate in the break of 13, why do a turn?

 

Question - do the riders at SA's have access to split times ?

[J Wakefield]

3 minutes ago, ChrisF said:

 

Question - do the riders at SA's have access to split times ?

Yes, cause if you watched the coverage on IG they were giving out times to front group. 

[bleedToWin]

31 minutes ago, ChrisF said:

 

Question - do the riders at SA's have access to split times ?

Frequent updates on whiteboard from comms and folks shouting the timegap in the feed zone

[bleedToWin]

6 hours ago, Spinnekop said:

With the Vets I sat in the bunch and did nothing

30+ or 40+ vets?
Just want to know if I should vloek you 😜

[The itch]

4 hours ago, J Wakefield said:

If you let a group of 13 go up the road with 6.5min thats not negative, thats not being able to read a race.

If you have a team mate in the break of 13, why do a turn?

Hit the nail right on the head

[The itch]

2 hours ago, Spinnekop said:

On that note.
I have mentioned it to a lot of people and constantly get dismissed.
Would it not be beneficial for CSA to host SA's based on Provincial selection?

Each province gets to select 50 riders.  Or perhaps 10 in each age cat.  
Based on your best performance in any one of two provincial races.
That way the provincial champs get riders and that way you "earn" your spot in SA champs and not just buy it.

Spot on, but every man,women and their dogs are sponsored, they get selected and refuse to wear your value for money provincial kit/colours. Make the elite champs open and allow the pros to bring a few foreign teammates. Impose provincial competition on the veterans and youth categories 

[Spinnekop]

1 hour ago, ChrisF said:

 

Question - do the riders at SA's have access to split times ?

We did.
Motorbikes gave us times every 10 or so km

 

[Spinnekop]

44 minutes ago, The itch said:

Spot on, but every man,women and their dogs are sponsored, they get selected and refuse to wear your value for money provincial kit/colours. Make the elite champs open and allow the pros to bring a few foreign teammates. Impose provincial competition on the veterans and youth categories 

Nah.  Kit per province wont work.  Not enough (zero) funds.

The idea will not be to ride as a team in provincial colors. 
The idea is to be selected per province to ride SAs.
Once you are in SAs, your ride is your own and your normal......lets call it trade team.......John don't laugh.......will help you or you help them, same as per normal.

Just the selection of who rides at SAs is a bit more complicated and the way to earn provincial colors is structured around getting selected to represent your province at SAs

[Jbr]

3 hours ago, bleedToWin said:

Frequent updates on whiteboard from comms and folks shouting the timegap in the feed zone

That was actually pretty pro hey, except I didn't like it when they showed the bunch 3VB-1VA, because then everyone was looking at us even more to bring it back 🤣

[bleedToWin]

59 minutes ago, Jbr said:

That was actually pretty pro hey

An upgrade from the usual Comm shouting out of an open window into the wind and nobody able to hear the time gap yes!

[Jbr]

19 hours ago, DieselnDust said:

looked like a lot of tactics was employed in the game. Happen when team tactics outplays provincial strategy. Was there even provincial strategy employed?

What do you mean by provincial tactics ? Joburg guys letting Joburg guys win against CT guys ? Tbh I doubt that's what happened, but maybe. I just think everyone thought there's one team with 6 strong guys, nothing can be done against them. Let's just be passengers and maybe get lucky.

What is for sure is that the team that won played it perfectly sending a guy up the road in the first minutes of the race, then another joining him quickly, and then sitting in the bunch with their 4 other guys, ready to jump the minute we close the first gap. They had numbers so they could afford to take those risks. Everyonelse racing for themselves had no interest in burning matches so early. That's road racing. Hopefully next year a course more like last year, where team numbers and tactics play less of a role, and pedaling hard decides the race.

Edited February 12 by Jbr

[DieselnDust]

1 hour ago, Jbr said:

What do you mean by provincial tactics ? Joburg guys letting Joburg guys win against CT guys ? Tbh I doubt that's what happened, but maybe. I just think everyone thought there's one team with 6 strong guys, nothing can be done against them. Let's just lets just be passengers and maybe get lucky.

What is for sure is that the team that won played it perfectly sending a guy up the road in the first minutes of the race, then another joining him quickly, and then sitting in the bunch with their 4 other guys, ready to jump the minute we close the first gap. They had numbers so they could afford to take those risks. Everyonelse racing for themselves had no interest in burning matches so early. That's road racing. Hopefully next year a course more like last year, where team numbers and tactics play less of a role, and pedaling hard decides the race.

I mean like did the WP have a secret meeting and and talk about what they wanted from the race or was it mano et mano? Look Les like the latter with the jhb teams playing it tactically. Riders either organise themselves according to their usual team structure or if there isn’t that then at least they should organise themselves provincially and they race for the most suited to the course guy / gal in their province ?

or am I inhaling too much 2nd hand smoke in the blue bird market cocktail room…?

[Jbr]

10 hours ago, DieselnDust said:

I mean like did the WP have a secret meeting and and talk about what they wanted from the race or was it mano et mano? Look Les like the latter with the jhb teams playing it tactically. Riders either organise themselves according to their usual team structure or if there isn’t that then at least they should organise themselves provincially and they race for the most suited to the course guy / gal in their province ?

or am I inhaling too much 2nd hand smoke in the blue bird market cocktail room…?

There was good cooperation between us (2 Asap, both in VB) and Rdx (2 VA) as well as one other team that I think was a mix of VA and VB, they actually won the VA by the way, not sure where they were from, I think garden route. But none of the teams were going to sacrifice themselves so that a guy from the other team wins, just to bring back the title in CT 😅. I was disappointed in the end that we didn’t get any title for sure, but provincial tactics, meh I don’t believe that’s a thing 😅

[NotSoBigBen]

Daniyal Matthews should be very proud not only of being the SA champ but of having outsmarted and outridden those who should have known better! 

Well done

[ians H2Sport]

14 minutes ago, NotSoBigBen said:

Daniyal Matthews should be very proud not only of being the SA champ but of having outsmarted and outridden those who should have known better! 

Well done

Same with the Junior race. The small break away (3 riders) got a gap and were not chased down in time by the race favorites. There was an outcry over the 'chase' group being held back by race officials due to the Elites catching and passing them, but in reality they did not read the race and simply put, were outsmarted and out raced  

[Danger Dassie]

On 2/11/2025 at 6:54 AM, Nick said:

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.

For sure, it was good when just about every event/organiser sent out a presser and images. 
CSA were really good with utilising Mylene for general PR and contracting Gameplan for events. 
Unfortunately, it also became generic as we pretty much all published just about anything and everything verbatim.