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Why is downhill basically dead in SA


_Daemon_

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OK yes, not as much dead down in the cape as here in gauteng, but why does places like Whistler bike park in Canada(www.whistlerbike.com)? And stuff like that flourish overseas but in SA we are soooooooo XC, not that it's a bad thing, just wondering.

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There is hundreds of younger guys that would love to start DH. But with the high cost of decent equipment, they normally start with cheap bikes and loose interest very quickly. What we need is a few serious guys that can do some develepment programme and maybe get some decent second hand equipment in the hands of the youngsters.

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the cost of downhill bikes could be a factor

 

Sure but you can get a bottom of the range DH/Freeride bike for XC DS bike  prices. And it's not just DH, same with dirt jumping, etc. North shore style riding/slopestyle etc. etc. All pretty much non-existent in SA compared to overseas.

 

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There is hundreds of younger guys that would love to start DH. But with the high cost of decent equipment' date=' they normally start with cheap bikes and loose interest very quickly. What we need is a few serious guys that can do some develepment programme and maybe get some decent second hand equipment in the hands of the youngsters.[/quote']

 

And get places to ride, you don't need a DH bike to start developing skills, if the places are there to ride, more people will get into it, which should bring the prices down as well.

 

It's sort of pathetic that Greg Minaar is one of the best out there...but his sport is dead in his home country...

 

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good point, daemon, but it's the kinda of thing most of us in gauteng would get as a secondary bike, as we'd have to travel a distance to get to decent downhills. whereas the youngsters in midlands for instance walk out their front doors onto great downhills.

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We need Meaurant in Gauteng....

 

agreed, and your earlier post was right: we need to get places, make downhills, find trails, build jumps. take my beloved dumps in benoni: there are no long downhills, but the potential for freeriding is huge  
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There is defiantly potential here for places to ride...but no one is organised enough to get a bunch of guys togheter and built something, for example, there's decent length downhills in pretoria, next to the N1, just after rigel, lots of trees on the one side and rocky on the other side, lots and lots of potential for DH, freeride, DJ, etc. etc.

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Why not try riding Melville Koppies, not strictly a downhill venue in the true sense but a lot of gnarly downhills nonetheless.

 

 

 

 

 

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We need BMX tracks! In the greater Joburg area, there are, as far as I know, four proper BMX tracks. None of these are in the north or north-west where there has been significant residential expansion over the past decade.

 

To effectively ride downhill, you need to develop bike skills. BMX tracks offer the safest, most convenient place to develop bike skills, kind of like a DH nursery.

 

There must be a pool of at least 500000 tweens and teens in Joburg's north and north-west that are missing out on the opportunity to ride and/or race on a BMX track. My nine-year-old son would be on a BMX track every day if he could, but I live in Randburg and it's about an 80km round trip by car to the nearest track.

 

A while back I sent a proposal to SuperSport for their Let's Play initiative that essentially suggests the building of BMX tracks on the inside of a 400-500m concrete oval cycling track - like a velodrome, only not as banked. This would allow for the development of track cycling (which produces fast roadies) as well as BMX (which produces skilled XC and DH mountain bikers). You can actually ride road bikes on that kind of oval too. Obviously needs corporate funding and municiple support, but can you imagine what that would do: a) for the worsening childhood obesity problem, and b) for the future of South African cycling...

 

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Any hill no matter how small got the potential to be a DH course ! Klapperkop got some stuff there that I will not ride ! At the Monument there is also one or two nice DH tracks and I know in the Pretoria-West area they got one mother of a downhill single track goong down the back of the magalies . Building parks where people can play (free of charge) will also promote DH a lot . Small northshore type stuff , with smaller jump etc will see people buiding up skills and moving up the ladder . That is the way I wanna progress . The bug has bitten !!!!

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I agree with Sean; where I live there has always been an area where kids built jumps etc...Municipal workers actually regularly tore down the jumps until some agreement was reached with the municiplaity and parents of the kids who rode there...but it is a haphazard affair.  Now if we were to be able to build a proper BMX track in the same area....I am also in correspondence with the local municipality about the possibilityof developing part of the lower slopes of Papegaaiberg, where the pine forest was decimated by fires about two years ago, into a kind of MTB/DH skills nursery, where jumps, dropoffs, freeride sections (there are enough tree trunks lying around!) can be built for kids to use.  This area is in full view of the houses in the upper area of the residential area, so it is quite safe.  Needless to say, up until now the response has been zero.

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Any hill no matter how small got the potential to be a DH course ! QUOTE]

 

True. Some guys overhere managed to build a 2k very fast flowing course...from the top of a small hill.
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dr, i guess there's always logwood, although not everyone has nice things to say about the aussie who runs it.

 

sean, agree about the bmx tracks. anyone been to germiston lately. it was a real mess the last time i took my boys there.
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