Enduro racing in South Africa came of age when Gauteng hosted the national championships for the first time on 20 October 2024, confirming the status of Enduro as a truly national discipline. The Western Cape’s Jason Boulle and Frankie du Toit were crowned the overall champions. Here’s how they won.
By Sean Badenhorst \ Photography: Dominic Barnardt
Originally organised as a niche racing discipline in the gravity terrain-rich provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape, Enduro has matured over the past four years, expanding to Mpumalanga, North West, Limpopo and Gauteng. And recently, the Eastern Cape hosted its first fully fledged Enduro event.
Although it is limited on gravity racing venues, Gauteng’s Enduro racing community is one of the largest in the country. The annual provincial series utilises venues in neighbouring provinces, with Thaba Trails essentially becoming the primary Enduro venue for the province.
Fortunately, the venue isn’t new to Enduro and Wendell Bole and his team crafted seven shortish, but feature-packed stages for the 2024 national championships. The event also doubled as an Inter-provincial and the organisation under Paola Damilano and her Gauteng Cycling team was top tier…
Frankie du Toit has mastered the Enduro discipline and is the best female Enduro racer in South Africa. Again – after winning the title in Pietermaritzburg last year. Primarily a downhill racer, Du Toit, representing Western Cape province, faced her greatest challenge over the seven stages at Thaba Trails, where gradient is moderate and pedalling hard is essential.
She won all seven stages to clock a final time of 15 minutes 58 seconds, which was 42 seconds quicker than Gauteng’s Julia Kotze, who secured the silver medal in 16:40. Another Gauteng racer, Anneke van der Walt, collected the bronze medal in the Elite women’s category with a time of 22:59, but in the overall, top Junior Tashane Ehlers, from Limpopo, was third, her younger sister, Luane Ehlers, the top Sub-junior, was fourth and the fastest Sub-vet, Philippa Spies from Gauteng was fifth.
“It’s difficult at Thaba Trails to keep your momentum and keep your flow with all these rocks. I’m happy with how I pieced it all together and managed my efforts throughout the day. And happy to walk away with the win,” said Du Toit afterwards.
“I did have some drama but luckily nothing to really throw me off. A couple of pulling-my-foot-out-of-the-pedal moments and I bashed into a tree on the one stage. Luckily, I managed to hold it all together. I’m pretty stoked.
“The organisation was good, the stages were well prepared, the liaisons were well marked and the timing system worked well. That’s all you really need in Enduro,” smiled Du Toit.
Du Toit has now won the Elite women’s national Enduro title five times – 2018 (Karkloof), 2019 (Jonkershoek), 2021 (Hartebeespoort), 2023 (Cascades) and 2024 (Thaba Trails).
In the Men’s division, Western Cape’s Matt Lombardi opted not to defend his title, but Jason Boulle made sure the province finished on the top step again. Although he is registered in the Western Cape, Boulle is somewhat nomadic and moves around the country to ride and race at various venues.
This, combined with his recent participation at the first UCI Enduro World Championships, has seen the friendly 27-year-old rise up the ranks in South African Enduro. Boulle won five of the seven stages for an overall time of 13 minutes 19.908 seconds.
This was eight seconds faster than runner-up and former national champion, Keira Duncan of KwaZulu-Natal, who won the other two stages and secured the silver medal. KwaZulu-Natal’s rising star, Omar Wilson, finished third overall in 13:53.308 and successfully defended his national Junior title in the process.
Western Cape’s Michard Meets (14:08.965) and North West’s Wade Prinsloo (14:11.228) rounded out the top five overall.
“It’s pretty surreal to be the South African Enduro Champ. There’s been a lot of hard work that’s gone into this, but to beat a rider of Keira’s calibre, seeing the lines he was taking in practices… Yeah, I’m pretty blown away. We had incredible stages, good competition and good camaraderie among all the competitors,” said a chipper Boulle afterwards.
“I was a bit untidy on the first two stages – a few pedal strikes and just struggling to find the flow a bit. I think we were just pushing harder than in practice. I hit the blind stage really well and got into my groove after that.
“This is my first national Elite title and it’s undoubtedly a career highlight for me. I was gunning for this jersey last year but didn’t manage to get it. It was high on my list of goals for this season, so I’m so stoked to achieve this.
“I really enjoy the riding at Thaba. It’s one of the spots I head to when I’m in Joburg. I like the rockiness and gradient of Stage 2 and it would great to have some more stages like that in the future. Ultimately though, no matter what the stage is like, the faster you ride it, the more technical it becomes. It’s already technical here, so adding speed is exciting.
“It was a solid seven stages for a national championships and Gauteng Cycling organised a great event,” added Boulle.
The future of Enduro looks bright. Certainly among the males, with two Junior men and two Youth men in the top 10 overall. Omar Wilson will leave the Junior ranks next year, but Luca Zietsman (second Junior and seventh overall), Neil van der Vyver (first Youth and ninth overall) and Troy Cole (second Youth and 10thoverall), will lead the next generation of Enduro racers.
Mentions should also go to Veteran men’s winner, Dan Fowler, who was 12th overall despite having a three-month injury layoff and Masters winner, Sean O’Flynn Madden, who was an impressive 14th overall.
The Sub-Junior Boys division is also worth noting. It was a tight tussle, with Gauteng’s Luke Stafford narrowly taking the win on his home trails ahead of the Western Cape pair of Lian de Jager (silver medal) and Sven Etsebeth (bronze).
KwaZulu-Natal won the inter-provincial contest with Gauteng securing second place and Western Cape third.
The addition of an Enduro World Championships to the international calendar in 2025 means that the 2024 national champions will only have just over six months of boasting time. The 2025 Enduro national champs will take place on the first weekend of May, also culminating a much shorter national series.
This is to allow riders to score points towards national selection for the 2025 UCI Enduro World Championships, which take place in Switzerland from 30 August-1 September. The Enduro World Championships only caters for Junior and Elite racers.
Full results:
