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RETHA, NADINE DEFEND LADIES TITLE

15/10/2018 04:10:00 BY SANELE JELE

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MAGUGA – Despite not beating last year’s record, the pair of Retha Harding and Nadine Stein defended the Inyatsi Swazi Frontier Mountain Bike race.

The Inyatsi Lovely Ladies last year won the three-stage race in 12:44:13 hours while in this year’s edition, they finished the race in 13:11:13 hours. They were closely followed by Superwomen duo of Kathy Rees and Bonny Swanepoel who clocked 14:18:47 hours.

The race started at Hawane on Thursday and finished on Saturday at Maguga Lodge. The race was divided into three stages, and on each day, the cyclists endured a 60km course. Harding said they partnered well as a team.

“We had a very strong race as we beat the runner-up ladies by over an hour. Day one and day three were extremely technical which favoured us and this is where we made the gap bigger. Overall, we worked well as a team. The event was well organised and it was great to see so many internationals joining the race,” Harding said.

In the overall category, the pair of Mormond Faka Fire, William Kelly and Thulani Gule, finished the race in 11:06:47 hours. The Faka Fire team were the first Eswatini cyclists to win it since 2014.The last Eswatini duo to win the race was sifiso Mhlanga and Sihawu Dlamini.

Coming second was another local Inyatsi cyclist in Sifiso Mhlanga and Rudolf Pretorius who clocked 12:31:27 hours with team Buck ‘n Pom completing the top three in 12:43:22 hours.
Lesley Foss, who was one of the event organisers, thanked all the sponsors who supported the competition.

“We had a fair attendance even this year as we had 56 registered teams. We also had cyclists from across the border. We also want to thank the cyclists and people who volunteered to offer help during the race.We do hope that next year it will bigger and better,” Foss said.

Maguga Lodge Managing Director Brian Figueiredo also said they were happy to be associated with Swazi Frontier.
“We wish to maintain our relationship with Swazi Frontier. This event really helps in boosting the country’s economy through tourism as we understand that there are international cyclists who partake in the race,” Figueiredo said.