FOUNDER’S BLOG
The home of founder Kevin Vermaak’s stories, chronicling the journey of Nedbank Gravel Burn – from a spark to a flaming inferno.
As you may have read, we managed to secure an absolutely brilliant title sponsorship from Nedbank for Gravel Burn. I am very grateful to Nedbank for sharing our vision which, in turn, allows me and my colleagues to travel this journey doing something that we love. I can’t emphasise enough how this partnership affects our daily approach to our work to build the Gravel Burn – which is now officially the Nedbank Gravel Burn.
Gravel Burn received the perfect Christmas present near the end of December… a title sponsor! The name is still under wraps but what you might have seen is one immediate consequence of this: we announced a $150,000 prize purse for the event, making it the largest single-race prize in the history of gravel bike racing...
It’s been a while since my last blog. My excuse is that I’ve been wholly consumed by the act of organising the race which has left me no time to also write about the organising! To be honest, it all feels a bit like 2004 again and those wild times before we staged our first Cape Epic.
Well, it’s been a busy time since my last blog. Among the many developments two things stand out: Trial Burn and our first formal presentation of Gravel Burn to the media. Both mark significant milestones in our new event’s young history, and the Gravel Burn team and I believe that they’ve set the bar for things to come…
Some of you will know me as the founder of the Cape Epic (I started work on that a full 20 years ago now!). Well, I’m now planning something in a different – but also familiar – space.
After selling the Cape Epic to The Ironman Group in 2017 – but staying on in a consulting capacity – I finally said goodbye to the event at the end of 2022...
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