Burry Stander takes the lead in the 2010 Giro del Capo
On day 2 of the 4 day Giro del Capo Burry Stander of Specialized won the stage and took the overall lead with some impressive riding that was equally backed up by team mate Christoph Sauser. The two are using this race as preparation for the 2010 ABSA Cape Epic where they will beridingin the colours of Songo.info/DCM.
Songo.info rider profile: Thokozile Snono
Name: Thokozile Snono
Nickname: Thoko
Date of birth: 1996-08-16
Age: 14
School: A.F. Louw and Grade: 7
Where do you live: In Kayamandi
BMX Achievements: N/A
BMX Goals: To be a national champ!
Team: Songo.info
Sponsors:
When did you start riding BMX and who got you into it? In August 2009! I had my friends talking about it all the time and I went and joined.
Can you remember what your first race meeting was like and how you felt? Yes! It was in Kayelitsha on the 24-09! I was very excite and very nervous.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years from now? Racing as a professional!
Who inspires you to race and why? Sharlene! Seeing her race at that age gives me a big hope that I would make it as well.
How would you describe yourself? I am a self motivator!
What training do you to keep fit and in form? Running and riding on the track and many sit-ups.
What won’t you leave home without? My mom’s food!
What are your goals for the BMX season and the future? I want to win every race that I enter in.
What goes through your mind on the start line? To win the race!
Who would you like to meet and why? Sifiso! He had much bad luck in the races but he always come back very strong.
What does it take to become a top rider? Hard training; commitment; Team spirit; respect and listen to my coach.
What is your ultimate dream? Is to finish my studies and to be a world champ.
What do you do to relax? I stretch!
What is the best part of your day? School and training secessions!!!
What other talents do you have? Running!
What advice would you give to other girls wanting to start BMX? Just come and join it is much fun and you get to give the boys a ride of their money.
What music do you enjoy? RNB and House Music
If you were the president for a day, what changes would you make? I would build house for all the families of the kids from my BMX club.
What are you most proud of? My school work and when I did well in the race and when I beat the boys on the hard session.
What can’t you live without? My parents and BMX!
Hobbies? I like dancing!
Your favorite food? Meat!
Xterra South Africa 2010
On Saturday the Songo.info team were in Grabouw to participate in the 2010 Xterra South African Championships. Race report by Songo Fipaza and official race images to follow shortly. Thank you to Michael Meyer and his team from Stillwater Sports for their support on the day.
We left Kayamandi at 19:00 on Friday and we made a stop at Pick’n Pay to get some food for the night.
The drive to Grabouw did not feel long as the kids we so happy and talking a lot on the taxi. We arrived at the Grabouw Country Club at 20:50 and offloaded our bikes and parked them in the medical tent. We then put up our tents, had dinner and all of us got to bed early as it was a long day coming up.
Our day started at 06:15 as we went to support the start of the trail run at 06:30. This was followed by breakfast and registration and all the kids were in good spirit and ready to have a goodtime. We had 10 international students from the University Stellenbosch swimming for us as part of the Songo.info teams. They arrived at 09:30 and had enough time to meet up with all their team mates for the day.
The 1.5km swim started at 11:00 and Deanna Price an American student was out first and she was in the top 20 and she tag Ndiphe. Kaitlin Kitchen also came out and tags Siphenathi and he was out on his mountain bike leg chasing Ndiphe. Melody Knight ; Carien Van Caam; Callie Cutler; JP Philipp they also came out following one other and Sipho was the 6th one to go from my kids and he was first to come back from my kids and tag Litha who went out as if he was running 100m. Litha ran 46 minutes for the 10km and that was a great team.
Sipho was followed by Thembisile; Ndiphe and Siphenathi on the Mountain bike leg. On the run it was Sandiso, Azukile who finished 10 minutes after Litha. The 3 girls ran very well and that was Daphne; Yolisw and Lavisa.
Odwa had some mechanical problems and he was out there for a long time and he was the last one from my group to come back and tag Elijah who ran 45 minutes for the 10km leg.
It was a great weekend for my kids and they all enjoy it very much.
Thank you very much to the following people who swim for us: Jay Philipp; Kaitlin Kitchen; Melody Knight; Deanna Price; Christina Hertner; Carien van Caam; Philip Gilman; Callie Cutler and Philipp Moehring.
Thank you very much to Mike Leslie from the ISOS for organizing transport for my swimmers.
Many thanks to Stillwater Sports for the entries we truly appreciate.
Thank you very much to all of our supports out there you’re truly making a difference in the lives of the children of Kayamandi.
Thank you,
Songo Fipaza
Songo.info rides against TIK abuse in the Cape Town 99′er
This past weekend Songo got to take 5 of the boys with him to do a ride against drug abuse at the 12th Annual 99′er Cycle Race in Cape Town. The distance covered was 108km which was a new feat for some of the boys but a great indication of the progress that has been made in their fitness and ability. It was also the first outing for our awesome new bike trailer that has been provided by one of our new partners, Contego Asset Management.
Dutch Olympic BMX team visit Songo.info in Kayamandi
The Dutch BMX team were out in Stellenbosch for a two week training camp to escape the winter back home in Europe and we were fortunate enough to have them out in Kayamandi for a few hours this last weekend to give the kids a little bit of an exhibition as well as show some of the hard work that must happen in training to take you right to the top.
Head coach Bas de Bever started out by going through some of the basic stretching and strength workouts to get them warmed up…
…and then it was on to the track. The Songo riders split up in to groups and got some more individual input on getting out of the start blocks effectively, proper cornering and their favourite for the day…jumps!
The big laughs for the day came right at the end when one of the Dutch riders was prepared to lie down on one of the table tops and let a rider jump over him…they all wanted a shot at it but just one of the Songo boys pulled off a successful jump and that was the end of it.
Thanks again to Bas and his team for their time, enthusiasm and willingness to come and join us out at the track for the day. It was real inspiration for the Songo.info riders in being able to see first hand what levels can be reached in the future.
Teachers showing the kids how it is done on the BMX Track
This week two of the staff from Kayamandi High School came to join some of the kids at the track for some fun. Mrs Eunice Myataza was a teacher till August this year and according to Songo she will be joining the some of the easy rides to inspire women in Kayamandi to start getting more involved.
Mrs Victory Hani is the deputy principal of the school
Track Day in Kayamandi
This last weekend we all joined up at the BMX track in Kayamandi for a bit of a fun/training day with the mountain bikers as well as BMX kids. There was an official race happening in Cape Town but Songo had decided that it would be better to spend the time training in preparation for the next league race in 2 weeks time. It’s not often that the mountain bikers come and ride on the track so there was much banter and good spirit as to who would be the fastest on the day.
Our first race for the day was picking the 5 fastest mountain bikers and putting them against the 5 fastest BMX guys in an elimination race. The one crossing the start/finish line last would be taken off the track each lap till there was just one left. The mountain bikers were allowed to start in the front as they were not used to much time on the track but it was evident within one lap who was on home turf.
The BMX boys were quick to move to the front and with 4 laps remaining there was only 1 mountain biker left making sure that they “showed who’s boss”. Next up were the juniors in similiar style racing but shortened to 5 laps as the Stellenbosch heat was turned up.
The aim of the day was to incorporate a little bit of cross training as well and Ndiphe come up with the idea of a BMX duathlon. The seniors would run 3 laps, cycle 5 laps and finish with a 2 lap run at the end. Once again it would be a mix of the BMX and mountain bike kids battling it out for bragging rights the following week.
"Rasta"and "Shorty" leading it out from the front
Transition
"Rasta" was the champ for the day!
Songo.info hosts its first BMX League event in Kayamandi.
This past Saturday Songo.info had the opportunity to host its first BMX League event at their home track in Kayamandi.
The three clubs taking part were Songo.info/Cycling4Kayamandi, Velokhaya and Mitchell’s Plain and there were about 60 riders taking part in the various age categoties as well as a couple of elite riders from the Stellenbosch are that came to join in the fun for the day.
Warming up and checking all the lines on the track
We were fortunate enough to have a two man start gate which gave the kids a bit of a feel as to what the top level riders racing is like. The kids throughout all the categories all had the chance to do a flying lap where there time was taken and were then paired up to race accordingly.
One of the Songo kids starting his timed lap
Even though the temperature guage was steadily going up and the wind and dust getting worse the racing continued at a fierce pace with all the kids trying not to get eliminated and go on to each following round. Add to this some friendly rivalry of doing your club proud and you could only imagine all the cheering and supporting from the sidelinesas as race after race took place!
At the end of a great days worth of racing there was a little exhibition from the local elite guys as well as the prize giving where Songo.info took some of the medals. The guys from the mountain bike club were out to support as well and I am happy to say that Sivuyile that crashed so badly at the Lourensford Classic has fully recovered and back in training!
Lorensford Classic 2009
Race report by Songo Fipaza
Dear Songo Team,
It is always a great honour for me to report about the kids.
On Saturday we took part on the Lourensford mountain bike race.
It was a very beautiful day and the kids were very excited and ready for it.
We had 5 kids doing the 58 KM; 7 did the 32 KM and 2 girls doing 15 km.
The kids are improving everyday it always great to see them in action.
I was with the kids that did the 58 KM; you should have seen them at the start and they were all very focused and ready for action.
They started very well and just after 5 km there were couple of hills and my kids were flying up as if there were something pushing them behind.
I was listening to other riders on the race saying wow what do they eat and some saying they look very neat.
It was Sivuyile Kephelele in the second leading pack and he was looking very strong and behind him it was Sipho going very strong as well.
Sivuyile manage to stay with that pack until the last 8 km where it was a very technical down hill.
He crashed on the last 2.5 km as he was going fast on the down hill he heats the hole and that was the end of his race.
He bent the front wheel and his eye go hit his is still in Somerset West hospital and the will send him to Tygerburg hospital to have a look on his eye.
I was with him until 19:30 and he is fine just the eye and his face got very swollen.
Sipho was just about 500 m behind him when he crashed and he says it was a very bad fall he had the noise when he went down.
Sipho stayed with him until he got helped and many thanks to Meurant the races organiser who was running around and making calls for Sivuyile to get a help that he needed.
Meurant still managed to call me at 18:30 on Saturday to find out how was the boy doing? Thank you very much Meurant your support means a lot.
The rest of the kids did very well and I am very proud of the 2 girls that did very well on their first race.
On the 32 km it was a very close call between my three boys Unathi; Siyabulela and Mava the work together all the way and it was the sprint to the finish.
Many thanks Arina and Meurant Botha from Dirtopia and Amarider for sponsoring entries for my kids.
Many thanks to Arina Botha for all your great work; when we got to the registration the numbers for my kids were put aside with the names of the kids at the back of the number.
Thank you very much Arina I was very honoured by your great assistant.
Thank you very much to Sarah Horrop for the Epic footages my kids watch that all the time on a day before the race even the new kids now know who is Christoph and Burry.
Many thanks to JAG Foundation for providing the transport for the kids into all the events that they have been doing through out the year.
Many thanks to all of you for the role you play in the lives of the kids of Kayamandi.
There are so many people that are very supportive and even on the races the riders always speaking positive to my kids thank you all.
Spur Mountain Bike School League
Race Report by Songp Fipaza:
We took 10 of them and 9 did 5 laps in the junior 17-18 and Unathi in 15-16 some did not make it as they were writing test in School.
Sivuyile, Siyabule and Sipho had anther great in junior 17-18 and they were close to one anther for the first 2 laps on the 3 lap they dropped Siyabule.
They did very well as they were still recovering from the 60km that they did in Wellington Sivuyile finished in 6th place and Sipho in 7th place.
They are now looking forward to the next one that will be on the 05-09 and 12-09.
Many thanks to Meurant Botha (Dirtopia/ Ama Rirder) for the entries and Raino (Adventure Centre) for transporting the kids to the race.
