Four compete in African continental track cycling championships |10 March 2017

Seychelles will be represented by four cyclists at the 2017 African Continental Track Cycling Championships in Durban, South Africa.

Mario Ernesta, Xerxes Larue, Christopher Gerry and Stephan Belle left yesterday morning for Durban where the races will take place in the Cyril Geoghegan Velodrome from March 20-24.

The competition will run from March 20-23, with Friday 24 being a reserve day for races postponed or carried over.

Zoning in ahead of the event, the four local cyclists, who took part in the African Road Championship in Egypt last month, will take part in a track cycling training camp from March 10-27, which will run parallel to the African Continental Track cycling Championships.

This will put them in the right frame of mind to compete against Africa’s finest elite and junior male riders in the KwaZulu-Natal region.

The training is being organised by the director of the World Cycling Centre Africa, Jean-Pierre van Zyl and according to reports, the camp will focus specifically on the skills and rules of track cycling.

“Many of these riders are great on the road but need to learn the skills and rules of different types of events that come with track cycling,” Van Zyl told Cycling South Africa.

He said most of the time the course will be taken up by skills and practice sessions on the track, but also Watt Bike testing so that he and his team will be able to assess what events would suit each rider best.

Mr Van Zyl has also said there will be close to 14 nations taking part and among the riders will be 2016 Olympian Ebtissam Zayed from Egypt.

“We are expecting to see great things, and I think that there will be quite a few surprises – especially from the women’s side,” added Mr Van Zyl.

He added that he anticipates a successful camp and championships: “It’s going to be great. This definitely won’t be the last track training camp, we are slowly but surely getting more riders into the sport and hope to one day grow great champions.”

Mr Van Zyl has also thanked the UCI (International Cycling Union) for sending 20 bikes for the training camp and supporting track development in Africa.

The track of the Cyril Geoghegan Velodrome was built in the early 1980s in memory of the late Cyril Geoghegan, a stalwart of cycling in the 1960s. The 333m, 42-degree banked track has played host to many national and international track events in the past.

G. G.