South Africa's top mountain-biker Burry Stander (GT/MR Price) is going to do double takes this year to ensure that he is at his best for the Beijing Olympic Games.

It means that Stander will be racing on the road as well as off-road and next Sunday he will be taking part in the Emperors Palace Cycling Classic.

"Competing in road races makes me a better cross-country mountainbiker. I have found that the attacks and counter attacks in road races compare favourably to what happens during a cross-country race," says Stander.

After two years without a sponsor, yet still ranking as one of the top events in the country, the Panorama Tour, a four-day road cycling stage race in Mpumalanga, has been given a huge boost following the announcement that MTN will sponsor the 2008 event.

The MTN Panorama Tour is unique in that it was South Africa’s first ever road cycling event in which participants must compete in two-rider teams, a concept already popular in mountain bike stage races. It’s also an event that shifts the focus away from the professionals and onto the recreational riders.

MTN Energade’s seasoned pros crafted a superb finale to give Jay Thomson the biggest win of his short career at the Pick n Pay The Star Fast One 103km road cycling racing race in Johannesburg on Sunday.

After dominating the local racing scene by winning more than 70 percent of the races they entered in 2007, MTN Energade was a marked team on Sunday at the traditional season-opening point-to-point event, which started in the south of Johannesburg and finished at Vanderbijlpark.

MTN Energade professional, Nicholas White, survived a gritty five-day stage race in rugged Central Africa to retain his lead in the UCI Africa Tour, the continent’s most prestigious road cycling competition.

La Tropicale Amissa Bongo Ondimba, or essentially, The Tour of Gabon, which holds a lofty 2.1 rating on the International Cycling Union (UCI) calendar, took White and his MTN Energade team to the tropical west coast of the continent during the past week, where their major competition came in the form of European-based teams.