The dust has settled and the puddles are drying out. The wind is blowing the trails made by the legions of motorcycles away. The Roof of Africa has come and gone again…
Big thank you to: Avani Maseru Our Lesotho home away from home. Kerry Hughes and Action in Motion for some of the pics.
This is our first take on this year’s Roof, focussing on the gold riders.
We want YOUR story for some follow up features. What was your experience?
Send along to foleyg@mweb.co.za
This year, The Roof saw so many contrasts from blue skies and scorching sunny weather during the first two days, to almost blizzardlike, wet, blustery conditions on the afternoon of the last day. Lesotho is “Like a box of chocolates”, to quote Forrest Gump, you never know what it’s going to bring!
The registration and startup was again at the Avani Maseru race village and there was a festive atmosphere as riders caught up, were registered and quickly sorted. It rained in Maseru during Wednesdays parade through the city, The Roof Of Africa brings the rain…
Lesotho is a brilliant place to ride a motorcycle. We trudged our way across the mountains to catch the action and what we saw was pretty darn spectacular. In addition to hosting the event at Music Box, one of the very coolest spectator points on the map, if you hopped on your bike and headed towards Bushmans pass, the DSP’s and refuels were all easily accessible, so spectators could get up close to watch the action.
It was once again, glorious from a spectators point of view and there were plenty of those dotted all along the Lesotho landscape…
As far as the racing goes – we’ll say this, and it was a point of discussion for our team, throughout the event. The skill levels these days are insane! Every year, the riders
are being pushed harder and harder – and as a result, especially in Gold, we are seeing riders taking on stuff that, just a few short years ago would have been classified as unrideable…
Our youngsters are being exposed to so much both locally and abroad that the improvements are simply astonishing.
Speaking of gold riders.
The sixth round of the Hard Enduro World Championship combined a Thursday time trial with two very different days of racing in the mountains.
Thursday’s best lap counted towards the overall result, Friday was a 110-kilometre mountain race and Saturday’s leg comprised two laps of a tricky 38-kilometre course.
This year we were treated to a display of skills as some of the legends in the sport came to play in the mountains. Mani Lettenbichler, Wade Young, Teo Kabakchiev, Matthew Green, James Moore, the Brightmore brothers – all massive names in the World hard enduro championship came out swinging… but, as the saying goes… there can only be one.
We woke up to clear weather on Thursday for the time trial.
Each rider rode two timed laps with the quicker of those counting for the overall start positions.
Mitch Brightmore actually recorded the quickest lap of the day, almost 50 seconds faster than Moore, however… a five-minute penalty, changed his official time and dropped him down to ninth spot. That was a massive setback in an event that is decided on accumulated time.
Brightmore began Friday more than four minutes behind Moore and almost four minutes behind championship rival Lettenbichler. Moore set the winning time with Lettenbichler just sixteen seconds behind him. Ashton Brightmore finished a mere seven tenths further back in third.
Luck was not on James Moore’s side this year – he lost a tyre Friday.
By the time that we had reached the first DSP, he was already far behind.
This brought Kabakchiev, Young, Lettenbichler and Green together at the front with the four establishing themselves as the leading group.
Sherco Factory Racings Kabakchiev came in just 32 seconds ahead of KTM’s Wade Young. Lettenbichler finished third on the day, with Green fourth.
Once the time trial results were included, Kabakchiev held an overall advantage of approximately 42 seconds over Wade. Lettenbichler was around 81 seconds from the lead, leaving all three firmly in contention ahead of Saturday’s last day of racing. Green was sitting fourth, less than five minutes behind Kabakchiev. In Lesotho, that’s a tight bunch!
Saturday’s shorter, more technical format shifted the focus of the race. Less navigation, more technical stuff, with just two laps to complete with a service stop in between. Kabakchiev opened the day, chased by Young.
Lettenbichler started third but was not able to close on the leaders when a charging Moore caught him after an incredible catch up race! It was a close run thing when we saw them breaching the final climb before the finishers arch… you can catch that vid on our facebook page.
Teo Kabakchiev took the win with a hungry Wade Young hot on his heels. The Sherco rider finished with a combined time, just under ten hours, taking the win by a little under three minutes.
Mani Lettenbichler finished third on the final stage, but he recovered 38.4 seconds across Saturday’s racing. That was enough to overturn the overnight deficit…
He took second overall by just 0.1 seconds.
Matthew Green completed the event in an impressive fourth, 34m26s behind the winner.
Matthew Green completed the event in an impressive fourth, 34m26s behind the winner.
Moore’s incredible final-day recovery brought him a fifth place, 38m11s from the leader. Who knows what might have been for the Beta rider if he’d not had that tyre issue?
Ashton Brightmore had a bit of bad luck when he blew an O-Ring on his GasGas. That repair saw him also losing valuable ground to his competitors…
Teo, Wade, Matthew and Manny had clean runs throughout and that made the difference at the end…
Thomas Scales hit the 6th spot. We’ve watched this young man grow rock by rock – he is a force to be reckoned with!
Luke Walker. What can we say! Whataboytjie! 7th spot.
The talk of the ride was Kyle Flanagan who really showed that you never laugh an old Roof hand off… A class act, he finished an amazing gold in an incredible 8th position.
The Brightmore brothers rounded out the top ten with Ashton pipping Mitch for the 9th spot. It was a pleasure having you guys over and we look forward to seeing more of you boys!
We have to give a nod to William Gillit! 56 year old. Riding Gold, South Africa’s Hard Enduro teacher completed his 18th Gold Roof Of Africa. We watched him helping riders up the hill before he crested! “When we are big, we want to be like Will!”
You can watch that Here.
Other interesting bits:
Ian Rall moved up a class from last year, from iron to bronze on his KTM 390 Adventure R. Last year he was on the iron podium. Light adventure is a thing – he had a hassle free big smile throughout!
By now you’ll know about hard enduro star Travis Teasdale taking on The Roof on his CFMOTO 450. He joined Rall in the bronze class and put on quite a display winning day 2 after starting in last position.
Stark Varg had 2 bikes out there as far as we know. Liam Elkington, once again put on a great display finishing 15th overall… but!
The other bike we saw was at a groot river crossing. The hapless rider dropped his machine underwater at least twice, picked it up and continued. Watch that here…
The longest day went to Ash Griffin who ran out of fuel just a kilometre or two from the end on friday. He left his bike and walked up the final climbs to the end at 10h30 in the evening. He went back down to collect his bike and ride out on saturday. You can watch that chat Here…
We didn’t see everything that went on. We know that there was a glitch with the fuel on day two – and all things considered, the organisers reacted decisively to make sure that peeps still had a good race. We are not going to harp on about that, but…
This is not our entire Roof Story. We want your story. The Roof of Africa is one of those epic adventures with so much to tell!
Send through – if you have a pic or two, even better. We’ll try to make you famous!
foleyg@mweb.co.za info@motomedia.co.za
Watch out for the Roof Of Africa coverage on the Bike Show: DSTV Channel 189 Ignition TV. Mondays 8h30 with repeats through the week.
