The Man Behind the Trails: Hendrico Burger’s MTB Legacy
MTB events guru, route builder and race commissaire, Hendrico Burger is too polite and too unassuming to label himself a South African mountain-biking pioneer. But that’s exactly what he is.
The man behind the routes of the Absa Cape Epic and FNB Wines2Whales – and up to his ears in behind-the-scenes work on multiple other events, over the years – was such an early adopter of the sport, he could tell who was riding trails based on tyre tread alone. Literally; he’s been involved in mountain biking for so long that in his earliest riding days, there were only a handful of people hitting the trails in Stellenbosch, and he knew them all by their tyres.
“Seeing people enjoy cycling and find that sense of achievement. That’s the real reward.”
Burger grew up in the Karoo – in Murraysburg and De Aar – before matriculating in Durbanville, Cape Town. Dreams of a pro riding career were dashed when he realised he “just wasn’t good enough”. He figured that being involved in events was the best way to stay in the sport; and the rest is history.
His events CV covers South African road classics like The Rapport Tour and Giro del Capo, before mountain biking came calling. He worked with another MTB pioneer, the late Meurant Botha, on the ‘Argus’ Mountain Bike events, then Xterra, and he was at the coalface when the Cape Epic launched in 2004.
Burger also contributes to mountain biking internationally as a UCI commissaire. “I sometimes travel to XCO races around the world, but can’t do all of them,” he says. “I really enjoy the races in Africa – I’ve just come back from Cameroon… This year I’ve also been in Rwanda and Namibia. I enjoy getting stuck in at grassroots level.”
I take my coffee… black, early in the morning, with music. Anything rustig – just some background noise.
I’d love to go for a ride… all by myself. That said, I’ve been fortunate to ride in Marin County in California – you get a sense of what Joe Breeze, Gary Fisher and Tom Ritchey were doing out there… I’d love to have ridden with those guys.
The secret to happiness is… Seeing people enjoying cycling and finding that sense of achievement. But on a bigger-picture level, the secret is family life, health, and being grateful for it all. Spending time with the people you love!
My greatest exhilaration… is riding where not a lot of people can go. I get to see the natural world with no one around. Recently, I was in the middle of nowhere and I saw three gemsbok that I knew no one else would see that day – or even that month!
My biggest fear… is a big failure at an event. There will always be something going wrong, so I’m not talking about the weather; rather… actually forgetting something, or something going wrong that you could have foreseen.
A moment of pure clarity… was when I realised that I was never going to be a pro cyclist. It was a road race, and I thought I was doing my best, maybe doing enough for a top 10. I was giving it my all, and the guys around me just dropped me. I was doing everything I could on the bike that day, but the other riders didn’t even notice me.
When I wake up… at my age, the first thing I do is make sure all the joints are working and that I can make my own coffee! I do the school run, then hit the admin – getting all the things I don’t enjoy doing out of the way early. Then plan, then ride!
I rage against… entitlement. I cycled the Wines2Whales routes after the three events had been completed, and the amount of litter was shocking. So many people just don’t care. I also see it in the way that people treat volunteers at events; it’s really not good.
I wish… event organisers would realise that we’re all doing it for the love of the sport. No one buys a bicycle to do only one event. People ride their bikes because they want to do all the events! Support each other, and support the sport – as cycling grows, we all grow.
After years of building and refining routes for major events, Burger channelled that experience into more permanent trail development. He helped design and develop the Montagu Trails, a purpose-built MTB trail system near Montagu in the Western Cape, designed to offer riders year-round access to well-crafted singletrack rather than event-only routes.
In essence, Montagu Trails reflects Burger’s philosophy: build routes that are challenging but fair, flow well, respect the landscape, and leave riders with a sense of achievement.