|
 It was not an event for the faint-hearted.
 |
James Wong Li Ren
|
Many came to compete. Many failed to complete. There
could only be one championship team for each school
category.
On a rainy Saturday morning, a group of young bikers
from Republic Polytechnic set off for what was to
be Republic Polytechnic’s first attempt at
a mountain biking competition at the intervarsity
level. Faced with teams from NTU, NUS, Singapore
Polytechnic and Nanyang Polytechnic, the odds were
heavily stacked against the team from RP as the team
came together less than 2 weeks before the competition.
After some mixing and matching, 4 students took up
the challenge of doning RP’s colours for the
competition, with the purpose of putting the school’s
name into the local biking scene.
 |
Jonathan Wee Lee Guan |
The weather was cloudy and breezy when the flag
off for the intervarsity division was conducted at
1100H. Conquering 4 laps of 3.7km per lap of highly
technical terrain, the members of the team managed
individual placings of 6th, 9th, 10th and 11th in
the team event. Though the team did not win any individual
honours, they did just enough to fend off the challenges
of NTU, who eventually came in second in the same
category. It was a commendable feat given that the
team was formed only 2 weeks before the actual event,
with the team comprising of only 2 riders at certain
points.
With their achievement, the students had put Republic
Polytechnic’s name onto the local biking scene,
showing that a school size of just 2,000 is no deterrent
to success.
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Cheng Yifeng |
Roy Wan Sum Tong
|
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The Team |
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