A Tale of Two Rhinos

The inaugural edition of the Rhino run saw a packed field of lunatic bike riders covering 2 700km across South Africa and Namibia - Some faster than should be possible, others getting full value.

- By Tim Brink

FAST & FURIOUS

Kevin Benkenstein

FINISHING TIME: 7 days, 20 hrs, 4 mins

PLACING: 2nd

It's not often we celebrate second place in a race the way we did with Kevin Benkenstein's in the inaugural Rhino Run.

Actually, for the peloton of dot-watchers (yes, it's a thing, and it's addictive: people spend days and nights following inanimate tracker icons across an online map), the general consensus was that the battle had been so engrossing, it didn't matter who won this thing. Despite the fact that Benkie's opponent was Australian, and we don't like losing anything to them, right?

As the 2019 winner of the road-based, unsupported 6 800km Trans Am event in the US, Abdullah Zeinab was one of the favourites in a star-studded field. Benkenstein was our local hope, even though a broken elbow a few months prior had put him in doubt even to start. was there, though - ever game for multi-day suffering, on a route he'd come to know well through recces and rigorous research.

After three days, the pair were barely separable on the tracking map. Besides the astonishing distances, terrain and the complexities of refuelling, eating and sleeping that a fully self-supported event brings... we had a race on our hands.

"To be honest, I don't really know what I expected," says Benkenstein. "I kinda had an idea of the route; I've ridden in the desert, and much of the first parts of the routes. But I think it was a bit gnarlier than I thought it would be. Really rough terrain, and across fields and crummy jeep tracks and whatnot.