PRAGUE – South Africa’s Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Alan Hatherly returned home after recording another top-3 finish on the Under-23 World Cup mountain biking circuit in the Czech Republic at the weekend.
Cape Town’s Hatherly was in the thick of the action throughout an enthralling five-lap fight at the third round of the event in Nové Město na Moravě.
When the dust settled, the South African and African XCO champion had claimed third, the same position as in Australia last month.
The Czech course is one of Hatherly’s favourites and the high-speed terrain offered an opportunity to put last weekend’s hard-fought but disappointing top-10 finish at a muddy World Cup in Albstadt, Germany behind him.
In a repeat of the previous weekend, he found himself off the front in the start loop again, taking a small selection of riders with him on to the first lap.
By the final lap, the group had been whittled down to four riders, with Hatherly very much in the thick of it all to finally claim his third place.
Hatherly returns to South Africa for some downtime, with just one SA XCO Cup race on June in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga. Then it’s back to Europe for another test against the world’s best at round four of the UCI World Cup in Val di Sole, Italy on July 7.
Under-23 World Cup results:
1 Vlad Dascalu (ROM) 1hr 23min 44sec
2 Filippo Colombo (SUI) 1:24:05
3 Alan Hatherly (RSA) 1:24:08
4 Petter Fagerhaug (NOR) 1:24:28
5 Joshua Dubau (FRA) 1:24:28.