Jose Borges is arguably one of the underdogs of the Enduro World Series. And yet, the fast Portuguese BH team rider caused a stir by taking second place at the third race in Madeira. We took a closer look at his racing rig, a fully pimped BH Lynx 5.
An overview on Jose Borges’s race-season
Jose Borges finished the 2018 EWS season in 11th place overall – missing a spot in the top 10 by a hair’s breadth. However, in his third EWS season racing for the Miranda Team, he proved that he’s indeed capable of keeping up with the fastest guys in the World: in Madeira, “ZÉ Manel” recorded his so far biggest success, taking second place at the third EWS race. What came after, was just a streak of bad luck – something that most racers will go through at some point in their career. In Val di Fassa, Jose didn’t finish the race and in Whistler he wasn’t able to compete the last stage because of a crash. In Zermatt he withdrew from the Queens Stage with a wrist injury, which meant he couldn’t score any EWS points for three consecutive races. As a result, Jose had to settle with a 26th overall for the 2019 season – which must have been hard for him after such a great start. However, this was still enough to secure a spot in the top 10 of the team rankings, with the Miranda Racing Team taking a very respectable 7th overall. And if this and his second place at the Madeira race weren’t good enough, ZÉ Manel can be proud of getting his name into the “Kings of MEGAVALANCHE” list. Someone who manages to survive the mass-start carnage, make it through the first gravel turn unscarred, blast down a slippery ski-slope at full pelt before bombing through a technical rockgarden, and finally get at the bottom of the hill in one piece before anyone else gets there, well, that person deserves to wear the crown!
After racing on 29″ wheels for the entire 2018 season, Jose turned up this year’s Whistler stage with his current BH Lynx 5 Carbon mullet rig (29″/27,5″) and has been racing with this setup since.
We wish Jose Borges, aka “ZÉ Manel” lots of successful moments in the next season!
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As the proud father of Robin and Max-Philip, Manne has been there from the start and is the wise elder of the editorial team. He won his first cycling race in elementary school at a school sports day. After less successful attempts at football, he found his passion for cycling via endurance racing in 1989! The world of racing still consumes him and no one in the team knows the EWS pros better than Manne. As a former head analyst of a state agency, he knows how to do proper research and finds exclusive news that no one else has. He supports his sons in day-to-day business dealings as the authorised signatory for 41 Publishing – viva la familia!