MARK ETHERIDGE: Grove chasing third major local title

While it’s true the retirement of multiple winners Jo van de Winkel and Carla Oberholzer from the cutting edge of SA women’s cycling is a big blow, the code is not entirely blunted.

Van de Winkel’s fellow Olympian, Cherise Willeit, is also not racing that regularly at the highest level any more, along with a few other big names from recent years.

Thankfully S’annara Grove has started wielding her own winning sword in women’s cycling.

Named after a book titled The Sword of Shannara (parents Alan and Robyn adapted her name slightly) Grove’s 2024 achievements were pretty impressive — more especially in the latter half, but more on that later.

Not coming from a purely cycling background in her youth (she ran cross-country at school and also did life-saving and triathlon) she’s been racing in Europe for part of 2023 and much of 2024 and knows exactly how hard it is for a South African.

“It’s such an eye-opener going to Europe... I started doing OK but you don’t know just how many riders are at the same level or better than you, until you get there — it was really quite something.”

Like every top cyclist she’s had her share of ups and downs, and has a tapestry of scars to prove it, but her biggest scare came early in her fledgling career.

That was in 2018 just after a nasty calf injury had ended her triathlon career when she came a cropper.

“I still remember the exact date, Friday 15 June. I was riding my time trial bike on the Circuits route in Durban and saw a car-transporter truck in the cycling lane up ahead — but thought nothing of it as there were no hazard lights flashing.

“The next thing I looked up and it was 5m in front of me! I went straight into the back of it at 40km/h. My saving grace was that there weren’t any cars on the truck so I flew through the gaps and out on to the other side of the road, broke my collarbone, tore a whole heap of muscles in that area, had a huge haematoma on my right arm and a concussion.

“I must have bones of steel as that’s the only bone I’ve ever broken, despite so many crashes in my career.”

To this day she’s never again trained on Friday afternoons.

It was also in 2018 that Grove almost ground to a halt through a condition known as Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), and something that every up and coming sportswoman really should be aware of.

“What basically happened is that I wasn’t eating enough for the exercise I was doing. I wouldn’t eat more than twice a day and I was very, very strict with portions. I wanted to be as lean and light as possible for racing. I’m about 172cm tall and I’m not ‘lanky’ for someone my height. The lowest I got my weight to was 56kg and that was from being in a state of basically non-athlete at 66kg before, but much less muscular. And I did that in a year or so.”

Now she tips the scales at about 60kg.

“It was weird the way I eventually got lean again. First, I actually started eating a lot more. Which still makes no sense to me. But that’s what happened. I started eating more on the bike which led to eating less off the bike.

“Sixty kilograms is a good weight for me. I’d like to be lighter for racing in 2025, but it’s a lot better than it used to be. And I wouldn’t ever try to lose weight like I did in the past. A little hunger doesn’t hurt, but starving yourself is stupid.

“Cycling has moved over to viewing power as more important than weight. You can’t be heavy, but you’d rather be muscular than too light.”

Near the end of 2021 a fellow rider, Sean Lucien, introduced her to track racing. “I’m so glad I discovered track because it gave me much more confidence in going fast with no brakes.”

It’s also happened to give her consecutive national Omnium track titles for the past three years.

Back to 2024 though. After signing up with UK-based continental team Doltcini O’Shea, a truly tough season in Europe saw her experiencing both crashes and successes but the year took a toll on her.

It helped that boyfriend (and personal bike mechanic) Wesley Phipps headed over to Europe to have her back covered. She headed back in September for SA road champs where she finished 19th, “but I kept ending up in a hole of fatigue so though there were bright spots, I had so much misfortune that I couldn’t translate anything into results.”

Boyfriend and parents have always played a huge part in her life. “Wes is always looking after my bikes at the expense of his own cycling, my dad still coaches me right from the very beginning and my mom is always helping with my nutrition.”

Fortunes all changed in the back half of the year, thankfully.

SA road cycling has three headline races, the Cape Town Cycle Tour, the Amashova in Durban and the Virgin Active 94.7 Ride Joburg.

Before Europe, Grove was narrowly squeezed out for the gold medal in Cape Town but come October the 31-year-old content creator for Fairway Factory Store was ready to fight all-comers.

“I went into Amashova [in her hometown of Durban] with hope but bad legs ... in raining conditions, I caught the leaders going down Field’s Hill and having been racing in Europe had helped me get a whole lot better at racing with fatigued legs and I managed to get the better of everyone in the sprint.”

Victory meant a lot for Grove as Amashova was her first road race, back in 2017.

“Going into 94.7 I needed an easy start as I was still just not recovering from the effort I was putting in. It ‘helped’ my cause that Jo [Van de Winkel] crashed which weakened the always strong Cycle Nation team.”

But in former African youth triathlon champion Maddie le Roux there was another threat. “Kudos to her, she did everything she could to make that race hard, doing everything possible to not let it get to a sprint and if she’d had another rider with her I think she could have got away.

“I went into the final corner in fourth wheel ... but I somehow managed to win that sprint and get two SA classic wins for the year, definitely something I’d not expected.”

Her two big SA successes have not gone unnoticed and she’ll face 2025 with more support. “I’ve got Trek SA on board this year and Maurten sports nutrition are also helping a lot.

She still has her concerns about the state of her sport locally though.

“SA champs will be very different without Jo and Carla and I really hope we get younger riders coming through, or even older starters in the sport like me, even at Under-23 levels.

“Cycling is a sport you can start relatively late. I was nothing special, I just worked very, very hard.

“Our women’s cycling is in a bit of a state with retirements and teams folding, and the attraction of gravel racing [I’ll do some of that as well as track] but something really has to be done about SA road racing.”

For now though Cape Town is on her mind. “For sure I want to win CT Cycle Tour. That would make it three in a row on local soil.”

Who knows, that may just be the hat-trick catalyst that gets the next generation of cyclists off the couch and in the saddle.