Cape Town - There’s no secret recipe to cycling success as far as Clint Hendricks is concerned. In his opinion, it all comes down to hard work, team work and a high tolerance for pain.
On Sunday, March 6, years of toil came to fruition for Hendricks and his fellow Team Roadcover members when the relatively unheralded 24-year-old won the Cape Town Cycle Tour in 2 hours 35 minutes 35 seconds.
The teamwork aspect in his assessment of the sport would play a major role across the 109-kilometre course, first hindering Hendricks, and then ensuring his victory. As for pain, he had endured years of it, on and off his bicycle, just to be able to line up at the race as a professional.
“We had bad luck in the beginning of the race,” Hendricks said. “Stuart Fitzpatrick crashed in the first 20km and broke his bike and got hurt so we were down to five.
“Then Gustav Basson punctured at the bottom of Chapman’s Peak, so then we were down to four guys because he got left behind. Bradley Potgieter was sick in the lead up to the race – we had actually all been a bit sick but I just got better quicker – so he wasn’t too sharp on the day and got dropped on Chapman’s Peak so we were down to three. Morne van Heerden had been pacing for me the whole day, because we put him on the front to control things, so he was spent.
“After Chapman’s Peak, it was just me and Ken Main for the last 40km and Ken rode his heart out for me. I couldn’t ask for anything more from him. He rode at the front and kept it at a high tempo so that they other guys couldn’t attack. I stuck to him, stayed in his slip stream (until the end).”
When the pair reached the final sprint – Hendricks’ main obligation to the team – he found himself blocked by the road barrier and the rest of the leading peloton.
“I was boxed in with like five or so guys around me. I backed off a bit and then they started the sprint,” he said. “Jayde Julius (who came second) was about three bike-lengths in front of me. I found a gap on the right-hand side, so I went all the way to the right-hand barrier and then started sprinting. I remember looking at Nolan Hoffman (2015 winner and the third-placed rider) and with every pedal stroke I just kept going forward. I think I passed Jayde Julius in the last five metres or so.”
The victory plucked Hendricks from obscurity to headline news. But, like almost every other overnight success, it was the result of years of dedication.
Hendricks would spend hours on his BMX as a child growing up in Klein Nederburg, an area of Paarl he likens to the Cape Flats.
He and his friends, and many other children in the area, took their riding quite seriously and formed themselves into informal teams or clubs. Hendricks and his friends called themselves the Biker Boys, and even had matching tracksuits bearing the name.
The groups would challenge each other to races between the street lamp-posts, in which Hendricks says he always achieved “fairly decent” results. He went on to earn second place in his first formal BMX race and the result encouraged him to start taking the sport seriously.
Hendricks’ stepfather, Pieter Jansen, had been a track cycling enthusiast and member of the Rhadsport Cycling Club for several years and helped to introduce the talented youngster to the more organised side of the sport.
“I asked him if I could get involved in track riding just to see what it’s like, and I remember the first thing he said to me was ‘don’t waste my money’ because cycling is a very expensive sport,” he recalled.
“Before I started racing I was training heavily. He got me a road bike when I was about 14 and we would ride all the way from Paarl to Strand. We would ride about 140km in a day. I think most of the other boys at the races just did track training so they were fast, but they didn’t have the endurance I had.
“That’s why I came to the track a level above them. I used to win everything. It looked like I was a natural, but I had just been training so much more on the road.”
Hendricks went on to win gold at the Boland Championships, Western Province Championships and National Championships as an Under-16 but just a few years later, he stopped cycling completely to focus on passing matric.
Though his parents weren’t happy, the decision paid off; he passed matric, resumed training after final exams and was offered the opportunity to join a small, Johannesburg-based professional team named Toyota Super Cycling the following year. His ability to endure suffering would face its first major test in the months to come.
“In my first year away from home I used to earn less than R2000 a month. I had to find a place to stay and feed myself on that. That was my whole first year, and I had to make it,” Hendricks said.
“Another cyclist and friend, James Perry, helped me out with a place to stay (for free). He knew I wasn’t getting a lot. I just started training harder and putting in more effort and it grew from there and I started getting more results. You have to start somewhere. You have to prove yourself. I stuck it out because I was doing what I love.”
What was it like as a young person of colour trying to make in cycling in Johannesburg?
“You get to a race and they think you don’t have the ability or talent to do this. You don’t get recognised or seen by anyone as easily. It’s more difficult for a young person of colour. You need to really prove yourself. You need to be mixing it up big time to get the exposure. I’ve always been told: ‘Put your name out there and go for any titles you can.’ They must mention your name as much as possible so that people know and recognise you.
“It’s hard for a guy who doesn’t know cycling to make it. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I think you need to be able to take pain and suffer a lot. That’s the biggest thing in the sport. You need to suffer and take pain during the race and in life. You need be hard, otherwise you won’t make it.”
Hendricks would go on to join Team EMG, and then move to the Tasol GT team in 2011. But just a few months into his second year with the club he was laid low by what was initially diagnosed as a muscular injury.
After seeing a specialist sports physician and a vein specialist, Hendricks was diagnosed as having a large blood clot stretching from his neck all the way down his arm. He was rushed to hospital immediately and though his life and cycling career was saved, Hendricks spent the next six months out of action.
He has credited Dean Edwards, the team principal, for sticking with him and helping him become the rider he is today.
“Dean takes a lot of risks with young riders. He develops a lot of young riders. You get some people who will take the risk but if you don’t start performing soon enough, they will just cut you lose. Dean actually invested in me,” Hendricks said.
“During that time (I was ill) I wasn’t racing or fulfilling my contract and he still paid me for the rest of the year and still re-signed me for the next year. That next year I progressed to another level.
“If it wasn’t for him putting in all the effort I might not have been cycling now. I wouldn’t have got another contract. No team will want a guy who hasn’t done anything for six months because they won’t know what he can do.”
The most important step in Hendricks’ journey to his Cape Town Cycle Tour victory came when he joined his current team. Previously, his work had been with the aim of helping others to win race. At Roadcover, he is the focus.
He plans to make the most of it and has targeted victories at the Momentum 947 Cycle Challenge and the Tsogo Sun Amashova Classic, the respective Johannesburg and Durban equivalents of the Cycle Tour, for the rest of the year.
But for now, Hendricks is focused on celebrating his win with his family and friends.
“They’re treating me like a celebrity now,” he said. “They were really happy for me after I won. They always said they believed in me and knew I could do it. They always knew in their hearts that I had the ability to do it.”
What will he do with the Cape Town Cycle Tour prize money?
“I’ll split it equally with my team, and then everyone decides for themselves what they want to do with their share. That’s what always happens. It doesn’t matter who wins, we take the prize money we get and we split it equally.
“On the day of the Cape Town Cycle Tour, I was good, but for the next race I may not be good and another member of the team will be. It’s a team sport. It’s worked like that in all the teams I’ve been in so far. In some teams it’s even put in your contract.”
Cape Times