Gawie Combrinck's Nissan Trailseeker Cullinan Race Report

This weekend, Gawie Combrinck competed in the first leg of the Nissan Trailseeker Series and took 2nd! Here is his full race report:

"This weekend I headed down to Cullinan for the first leg of the Nissan Trailseeker Series.

Last year I won the series and was keen to defend my title.

The races are always fast and with the new route a bit more technical and fun. We also had a few roadies joining us and that made the race hard from the gun. I had a last hard training week before Nationals and World champs that are coming up in next few weeks and knew I had to fight a bit smarter today as my legs were a bit tired from all the training. The race started of fast and furious as everyone was fighting to be in the front. As we hit the first technical I managed to get a gap with Max Knox and Arno du Toit. Max kept the pace hard till we hit the Iconic gorge where Nico Bell and Brandt Du Plessis caught up with us.

We opened the gap on the chasing bunch even more through this technical section. The next few kilo’s were quite hard with a lot of single track that didn't suite a bunch chasing. Max was trying to ride away from us, but didn't succeed and that kept the pace up.

As we headed into the last 30km, we encountered a lot more open district road and worked together to keep the gap on the chasing bunch. As we got closer to the finish I saw a gap with 7km to go and put in a big attack. Nico was the only one that was able to respond and we opened up a gap on the rest. The finish was fast and twisty racing through the houses. Nico got a small gap on me in the last km and beat me by 5 seconds in the end.

Results:

1st                   Nico Bell

2nd                  Gawie Combrinck

3rd                   Brandt Du Plessis

4th                   Max Knox

This was good start to my series defense and good training for National Champs that is coming up this weekend."

PCG Coach: Hunter Allen