RedBull seem to be busting out the international urban DH races at the moment, first Rio De Janeiro and now Cape Town. South African Dirt fan and photographer Eric Palmer was on hand to capture the event, here’s what he says:

Red Bull Urban Assault – Cape Town

A great misty morning in Cape Town was the start to the Red Bull Urban Assault from Signal Hill down into Bo Kaap. Had a quick chat with Gary Barnard about the new course & work out my plan of action (to photograph the event). I started off with some single track, which made up most the course & then hopping over a fence into a school where the urban side started.

The mist sealed my hopes of shots with Table Mountain & city bowl in the background, so just got a few shots of the single track & quickly moved into the school & was keen to make use of the unusual terrain.

With the Atherton boys here for the race everyone was pumped & ready to see how they faired against the best the world has to offer. The local guys all pushing as hard as possible. I don’t think Dan & Gee were expecting the times to be quite as fast as they were & their 1st run left them quite far down the list & needed to push it a bit more in their 2nd run, which they did (Dan had the fastest run of the day, clocking in a 02:43:94), but it was just not enough to knock Louis Knipe out of 1st place with a combined time of 05:35:81. Dan Managed to claim 2nd place with a 05:35:98 & Jonty Neethling taking 3rd nearly a second behind with a 05:36:87. Gee was just over a second behind Jonty & that landed him a 5th place after Johann Potgieter.

On the ladies side Rika Olivier smoked the competition with her combined time 2½ min faster than 2nd place!

Results:

Men:
1st Louis Knipe (05:35:81)
2nd Dan Atherton (05:35:98)
3rd Jonty Neethling (05:36:87)

Women:
1st Rika Olivier (06:51:42)
2nd Emily Rudolp (09:26:25)
3rd Kathy Harpe (11:30:84) tire came off rim on 2nd run & ran down to finish

Junior:
1st Daniel Fenton (06:47:97)
2nd Ryan Williams (07:04:46)
3rd Daniel Saunders (07:04:85)