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“The Last Tangle”

The highlands of Lesotho roared with the sound of two-stroke engines as the Roof of Africa Hard Enduro challenged every rider brave—or mad—enough to take it on. Jagged rock climbs, riverbed scrambles, and knee-deep bogs had already thinned the field, but Jaco Hougaard, a gritty rider from South Africa, was still fighting.

He wasn’t the fastest. He wasn’t the most famous. But Jaco had something better: relentlessness. That day, he was clawing his way up a brutal rock face called “Devil’s Staircase,” mentally ticking off another obstacle. And then, with a snap and a metallic rattle, his bike bucked beneath him.

The rear tire locked up. The engine screamed and died. Jaco leapt off just before the bike toppled sideways onto the rocks.

The chain had wrapped itself around the rear sprocket like a python—tangled, kinked, and immovable.

Disqualified. Defeated. End of race.

He sat on that mountain slope for an hour, watching other riders pass him by. Some offered help; some offered nods of sympathy. But no one could untangle that mechanical mess in time. It was a rare but cruel fate—chain derailments or snarls had ended more than a few races, careers even.

Back home, Jaco couldn’t let it go. He replayed the moment endlessly. It wasn’t just bad luck—it was a weak point in the machinery of the sport he loved. A R500 chain failure that could ruin a R60,000 dream.

That winter, instead of training, Jaco started tinkering. He stripped down old bikes, studied slow-motion footage of chain tension during brutal impacts, and even consulted with engineers from a local mining and agricultural equipment firm. His breakthrough came from an unlikely source: a hay baler chain guide that used a flexible, tension-responsive damping arm to maintain chain tension even after a derailment.

He built a prototype: a radial chain management system with a frictionless guided surface and anti-jump teeth that sat between the wheel hub and the rear sprocket. It was lightweight, didn’t interfere with performance, and most importantly—prevented catastrophic derailment from slack chain tension or side hits.

He called it “Wrap Stop.”

Jaco wasn’t a businessman, but he was a rider with a mission. He crowdfunded initial production, sharing test samples with his riding friends and serious game changers in the local Enduro world, and soon “Wrap Stop” was getting installed on bikes from Austria to Argentina. The next year at the Roof of Africa, a half-dozen riders ran it—none suffered chain failures.

Jaco returned too. Older, wiser, and with “Wrap Stop v2” mounted proudly on his Beta 300 RR.

He didn’t win the race. But he finished. And as he crossed the line, another rider whose bike had tangled the year before rode up beside him and shouted, “That thing saved my race!”

Jaco grinned.

Sometimes, failure is the best co-founder.

“Wrap Stop” went on to be adopted in multiple hard enduro teams worldwide. Jaco Hougaard never became world champion, but he became something rarer—an innovator who made racing a little less cruel for the next generation. Also, Jaco doesn’t exist but is based off a real life character who wishes to remain anonymous