First published in Daily Maverick 168

On his final run of the 2020 season, Greg Minnaar started with a bump and ended with a sigh. The downhill mountain bike superstar, the most successful rider in the history of the sport, banged  his helmet against an overhead beam at the start gates for the last race in Lousã, Portugal.

“Hopefully, they make the 2021 start gates friendlier for us taller guys,” joked Minnaar.

He had to settle for second place in the second race of the double-header on the Sunday of the Lousã weekend, his hopes of ending the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup season with a second win in a weekend dashed by a ride from the heavens by his French rival, Loïc Bruni, who won by just 0.17 seconds.

“I’m pretty bummed,” said Minnaar. “To be so close and have a good battle with Loïc. We had good battles in race one and race two. He’s just got me at the bottom. It was super close. My run was good. I nailed everything I wanted to. I felt good on the bike.”

He had felt even better on the Friday,  with perhaps the most popular victory of this truncated, weird season, extending his record of the most World Cup wins to 22. He had looked smooth all weekend. Heck, he has looked smooth all year. Wait, ignore that: Minnaar has looked smooth all of his career. He is, as commentator and former downhill racer Rob Warner said in Lousã, the “coolest man on a bike”.

Fresh Prince of Big Air

Warner called Minnaar many other things last weekend. His admiration overflowed for the Goat of downhill, the greatest of all time. In his younger years Minnaar was nicknamed the Fresh Prince of Big Air for the height and length he got over jumps.

He is also occasionally called the Puzzler for reasons that are not entirely clear. Indeed, he is a puzzle of sorts, an enigma in a sport that is hard on the body and has favoured younger men these past few years. He is 38, turning 39 on November 13. He is not supposed to be winning World Cups and finishing second overall in the series against riders in their early 20s. He hadn’t been sure he would win again, he admitted.

“It didn’t feel like [I would win],” Minnaar said at the weekend. “I had a good timed session and then in qualifying I was back a bit. Today I just tried to focus on neatening up my run and my line. I knew that in the middle section I was lacking time. Once I got down to the bottom I thought, jeez, I’m not going to lose this race here, so I just went as hard as I could.

“I’ve got some ruthless friends at home who have been demanding wins, so I’m glad I’ve done it for them. It is hard. You’ve got a long week with another race coming up tomorrow. You try to rest as much as you can, draw it out. I was pretty tired going into today, so I am glad I had the legs to push through it. You just push yourself when you are racing to another mindset, another level, and I think that’s what the addiction of racing is.”

Those friends would have been watching live from Pietermaritzburg, where Minnaar was born, bred and still lives, probably from the Thistle Hotel in Boshoff Street, the unofficial headquarters of the OneLife crew, as they call themselves. They are a party crew of loyal friends, many of whom took out bank loans to travel to Fort William in Scotland to see Greg race many years ago.

We have one life, so live it, is the credo. One of them has a really bad OneLife tattoo on his foot, the result of a night of drinking at the Thistle.

From Maritzburg to the world

From the upper deck of his house in Pietermaritzburg, Minnaar can see part of the Cascades mountain bike track where it all began. It is where he first rode a mountain bike. It is where he won legs of the World Cup in 2009 and 2012. It is where he became world champion for the third time in 2013.

Pietermaritzburg shaped Minnaar. He retains that small-town, down-to-earth casualness, twinned with an awareness and knowledge of the big, bad world. His love for two wheels began with motocross. His party trick was jumping 10 cars on his bike at the Royal Natal Show.

Faced with a lack of time to practise on his motocross bike, Minnaar focused on mountain bikes. He was given special dispensation to race in the 1997 World Cup event in Stellenbosch. That same year, he had told his parents he had decided on his life path. He wanted to leave school and race internationally. They agreed.

He returned to Stellenbosch to race in 1998 and became the first South African to finish in the top 30. He had found his calling. In 2001, aged just 19, he was the lead rider for the Global team and won the World Cup for the first time.

At 21, he was world champion for the first time. His career has been astonishingly consistent — three world championships (2003, 2012 and 2013), five silver medals and three bronze. He has been the World Cup winner three times and his big weekend in Portugal took him to third overall in the series for 2020.

The wins in Pietermaritzburg will stand out as highlights for Minnaar. The world championships were spectacular, Minnaar riding the final stretch with a flat rear tyre. In the build-up, I had bumped into him at the Thistle, and he had admitted to feeling the pressure. He needed to get out and get in touch with his friends lest he spend too much time thinking.

Emotional victory

The OneLife crew stormed the finish line in 2013, just as they did the year before during the World Cup, breaking down the barrier fence.

But 2012 was perhaps the most emotional and testing for Minnaar. His father was critically ill, having had two big operations in two days. His bodily functions, including his kidneys, started shutting down. Doctors put him into an induced coma.

The worry made it hard for Minnaar to train. When they brought his father out of the coma, the first thing he told his son was: “Boy, you have got a race to ride.” And, boy, did the boy race. Pietermaritzburg knew what Greg was going through. South Africa knew. He tore down the hill at Cascades to win for his dad. It was the most glorious of days.

Minnaar is champing at the bit for next year. As for all, 2020 has been the strangest and hardest of times. During hard lockdown, when exercise was banned, Minnaar could see the track where it all began, where he had enjoyed the best of times, and curse that he was not allowed to train.

The future remains uncertain in this pandemic, but Minnaar has hope. There are records to be extended, a fourth world championship to win. And there is a puzzle to be solved. DM168