Earlier this month, Matt Beers and a few other South Africans, took part in the first ever Gravel World Championships in which Matt managed to bag a 17th position!
Matt has mainly been focusing on the Gravel discipline since the Absa Cape Epic earlier this year, where he and his partner Christopher Bevins finished third. Matt spent a month racing some of the big gravel races in the US and found himself on the podium in both the Belgian Waffle Ride and the Rule of Three Race. Matt returned to SA for some down time to recover from an injury sustained in one of his races in the US, before getting back into the SA gravel scene, racing some fun races like The Gallows, where he smashed all the opposition out of the park on the final 10 km climb, despite having taken a wrong turn and adding about 10 km to his ride and taking the title of the first South African Gravel Champion.
Matt’s form has been excellent this year, as he proved with a top 20 finish in the inaugural Gravel World Championships in Veneto, Italy, this month. After, what Matt calls, a disappointing finish in the Marathon World Championships, where a puncture in the last 20 kms took him out of contention and he finished 33rd, the Gravel World Championships showed what he is really capable of with a 17th place, just ahead of the legendary Aussie, Lachlan Morton. Marc Pritzen, Cape Town Cycle Tour winner and 2021 National Road Champion, also put on a great performance with a 33rd-place finish in Veneto.
