Cycling junior champion, Lebopo Mompe of Tsela Riders excelled in the just ended Cape Cycle Tour hosted in South Africa.
Mompe who has participated in three Cape Cycle Tours said in an interview that with the experience he acquired in previous races, his aim was to do well this year. His wish was to stay in the group and finish the race in under three hours and he surely did.
The 19-year-old managed to finish in position 29 out of 275 participants in the Under 23 category, which to him is a big accomplishment. He noted that position 29 in a strong field of international cyclists is quite spectacular.
For Mompe, the accomplishment is made even sweeter as this was his first ever race of the year in 2021. Throughout the year, the lad was only training.
“I performed exceptionally well. This was the first race of the year in which I participated. I knew it was going to be tough. It was definitely going to be a shock to the system,” he said.
And surely it was a shock to the lad’s system. He noted that when the race got to the infamous suikerbossier climb the climbers in his group lit it up and that put him in difficulty.
“I dropped back a bit to recover because on the descend I was going to put the hammer down,” he explained. Winning might always be at the center of every challenge, for Mompe it is not always about riding hard; as he said one also has to be smart while at it.
“I executed my plan well. I went on to finish within a time of 2:56:03 beating my previous race time,” he said.
In all this, the Tsela Rider cyclist said he learnt to never doubt his capabilities despite the fact that the cycling scene in South Africa is more advanced than in Botswana.
