Years after having done the UCI World Championships Road Race. The European professional road cycling where he competed against the best riders in the world. Shaun-Nick Bester then became one of the best mountain bikers in South Africa didn’t take long.

I was only riding my MTB for a few weeks. Then I finished third place in my very first MTB race in October 2017.

About a month after, I almost ended that career with a serious crash on my road bike. Which nearly split my carve bone in some places.

I decided there and then, I needed a change in scenery and wanted to try something completely different for 2018.

2018 started off on a high note for me by entering different stage races in South Africa. This meant I needed to change my training routine completely from what I was doing for the last eight years.

I was so accustomed to long steady-state training than more strength work in shorter intervals.

My focus shifted from an economical approach to more of a brute strength approach.

I do a lot of core and gym work and don’t obsess about my weight.

While racing professionally on the road in Europe, my ex-coach kept pushing me to lose more and more weight. It got so bad that one of our team managers started giving me smaller cycling kit sizes to force me to lose more weight. I was already on 6% body fat and got told to lose 4kg more.

I am glad to have made the leap of faith and pursued a career in mountain biking as it paid off well this year with many victories and amazing memories.

Mountain biking will stay my main focus for the years to come but I will also still be competing on the road from time to time.

Shaun-Nick Bester to support Silverback OMX Pro Team at the 2018 ABSA Cape Epic: Read More

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