ACE-The Sufferfest Lesotho riders chase dreams in Switzerland

Another one in the bag...
Tumelo Makae celebrates winning the Nedbank Lesotho XC MTB Series two weeks ago

Lesotho’s Tumelo Makae and Bakang ‘BK’ Matshidiso Ebudilwe of Botswana are chasing their dreams at the International Cycling Union (UCI) World Cycling Centre (WCC) in Aigle, Switzerland.

The two mountain bike cyclists are part of the ACE-The Sufferfest Lesotho MTB Team and they left for Europe in March on a two-year Olympic Solidarity scholarship.

After just five months, their progress has been staggering.

Makae and Ebudilwe are fitter, stronger and – above all – technically superior, and at the beginning of this month both flew home and easily won their respective national mountain bike championships.

The two athletes are now back at the UCI WCC and this weekend they will tackle their first-ever UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, in La Bresse, France.

The events starts on Friday and ends on Sunday.

Thanks to the UCI points they won at their respective national races Makae and Ebudilwe will have better places on the starting grid, a significant bonus as they try to gain points towards Tokyo 2020 Olympic qualification.

UCI WCC coach Charlie Evans says both cyclists have made significant progress.

Both Makae and Ebudilwe, he said, arrived in Switzerland with few technical skills but enormous potential.

Initially they were unable to lift their wheels independently or bunny-hop on the bike but, in a short space of time, they have acquired the required skills to match up to international competition.

“I have been teaching them to be brave, technically good and assertive,” Evans says. “They need to be able to apply technical skills in race conditions. It’s one thing to manage it alone in training but another to pull it off in stressful race conditions when they are already very tired.”

The two athletes are gaining that valuable race experience at different rounds of the high-level Swiss Cup.

“At each race they are stepping forward and I hope their national titles will give them the boost they need,” Evans says.

“We’re still in development stage and we will treat La Bresse as a training camp going into Lenzerheide (UCI Mountain Bike World Championships one week later).

“We will set process goals rather than outcome goals, for example to beat the track rather than other riders, and to do even lap times.”

Tumelo Makae (left) and ACE teammate Bakang Ebudilwe

Last year Makae won the Lesotho National Championships in 2017. This year, he took victory at the Nedbank Lesotho XC MTB Series by an even bigger gap, despite a crash which made him wonder if he had blown his chances.

“After the third lap, I decided to attack,” Makae says. “When I crashed I thought it was the end of my race, but it wasn’t.”

In 2017, the 21 year-old Makae won silver in the men’s Under-23 race at the African Continental Mountain Bike Championships in Mauritius.

Makae also competed in the Commonwealth Games in Australia in April, finishing 19th, one lap behind the winners: “It was a good experience racing against world class riders,” says the young rider who will turn 22 on Friday.

“Since I have been at the World Cycling Centre, I have progressed physically and technically. I am better than before,” Makae says.

“Here we are not disturbed by outside things. We just train. I really enjoy it. I never did gym work at home and that has helped me. But I what I love most is going on the trails.”

In the words of Makae’s coach: “Compared to BK, Makae is more of a ‘bring it on’ rider who likes nothing more than to race and is very competitive. He never gives up and stays in race mode right to the finish line. He has responded extremely well to core skills since training at the UCI World Cycling Centre.”

After the UCI World Championships the duo’s Olympic campaign will continue. The next major goal will be the African Continental MTB Championships next year in Namibia where Makae and Ebudilwe will be able to earn more qualification points on their road to Tokyo 2020.