He was told to teach kids ball skills. He ended up building one of Cape Town's most trusted mountain bike coaching businesses — almost entirely by accident.

Rob du Preez is the founder of Rubber Side Down, a Cape Town-based mountain bike skills coaching business born out of an unlikely place: the 2020 lockdowns. In this conversation he traces the whole path — growing up racing road and track in Durban, discovering mountain biking almost by chance, and the strange gift that COVID gave an entire generation of South African kids who suddenly needed something to do outside.

He breaks down the three fundamental skills that determine how safe, confident, and fast any rider will ever be, looking ahead, braking, and staying balanced... and why he believes most cyclists never look at them because they're too busy chasing watts and nutrition plans. He talks candidly about coaching kids as young as four and a half, the parents who need almost as much guidance as their children, and why he believes South African cycling has a "perception problem" — we're already among the best in the world, we just don't see ourselves that way yet.

This is a conversation about what it actually takes to build confidence on a bike, and why the skills that keep a beginner safe are the same ones that make a professional fast.

0:00 — Cold open: the one rule of coaching kids

0:43 — Meet Coach Rob, from KZN road racer to MTB skills coach

6:52 — How COVID accidentally created Rubber Side Down

9:21 — Enduro vs. downhill, and finding his own line in gravity riding

15:56 — Building a business at the intersection of passion and skill

19:15 — The three fundamental skills every rider needs

30:45 — South Africa's "perception problem" in sport

35:46 — Inside the explosion of the Western Cape schools series

45:15 — What makes a good — or a reckless — skills coach

48:37 — Coaching the parents as much as the kids

1:02:12 — Rob's dream of coaching overseas

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