Bike Town Africa gives bikes and MTB Trail

Mark West

29/08/2011

Lesotho Cycling, last week, played host to an exciting project involving Bicycling Magazine’s Bike Town Africa and AMA Rider.

The project was aimed at school learners and comprised of building a MTB Trail and providing bikes. Most of the bikes were single-speed Avalanche Charges. These were chosen as they are strong, fast and require much less maintenance than common geared bicycles.

The MTB trail is 2km in length and resembles a BMX track in parts. This is ideal as it will help to introduce young riders to both disciplines at the same time honing important bike-handling skills. The trail was a hands-on labour of love for visiting project volunteers from USA and RSA. Steve Madden and David Brienza, founders of Bike Town Africa, took time from their busy schedules to be here alongside Rodale Publisher’s Ken Citron & family.

Meurent Botha from AMA Rider brought his expertise to design the trail and organise a race in which 279 learners took part. The race was part of Spur Restaurant’s School’s MTB Series, which is managed by AMA Rider.

The trail was built on Lesotho National Olympic Committee’s LEPERENG Olymp-Africa site and has become a welcome development of a previously under-utilised part of the site.

Special thanks to project director, Bradley Schroeder, Dominique le Roux for the photos and videos, all the donors and Dragons Sports for giving such good prices on Avalanche and Giant bikes for the project.