International mountain bike star Frans Claes is relishing the prospect of testing himself in South Africa’s premier road race, the Bestmed Tour of Good Hope, next month.<\/p>\n
The five-stage race, presented by Scicon and the City of Drakenstein, takes place in around the city of Paarl in the Western Cape from March 5 to 9.<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old Belgian, who is currently listed third in the international marathon mountain bike standings, has been in the country since January to prepare for a number of high-level events in South Africa.<\/p>\n
He sees the Tour of Good Hope as the perfect opportunity to show what he can achieve on the road, on which he competed as a professional in 2013.<\/p>\n
“I’m really looking forward to this challenge because it will be an opportunity to improve my speedwork.<\/p>\n
“I know there will be good competition and I’m expecting a fair amount of wind and some nice climbs, which will suit me,” said Claes, who will be supported by the Alfa Bodyworks team during the tour.<\/p>\n
He joined a crop of European cyclists in Stellenbosch to take advantage of the South African summer in preparing for the upcoming season.<\/p>\n
“The biggest benefit of being in South Africa is the weather, which is so much better than in Belgium at the moment.<\/p>\n
“There it’s winter with a lot of rain and cold temperatures. Here it’s hot, sometimes too hot, but I prefer the heat, so it is not so much of a problem.<\/p>\n
“Also, the terrain here is excellent to prepare for the mountain bike season. This is especially so for the Cape Epic since I can train on the same routes and do the trails we will do during the race.”<\/p>\n
Claes, who won a UCI Mountain Bike Marathon Series race in Spain last year, started his season at the Attakwas Extreme MTB Challenge in Oudtshoorn last month.<\/p>\n
“I did Attakwas where I came fourth, after which I competed in the two-day Simonsberg Contour race, where I also ended fourth.”<\/p>\n
The Bestmed Tour of Good Hope covers 490km with 5 218m of vertical ascent and Claes will be eyeing the third (137km; 2 687m ascent) and fourth (134km; 2 900m) stages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
International mountain bike star Frans Claes is relishing the prospect of testing himself in South Africa’s premier road race, the Bestmed Tour of Good Hope, next month. The five-stage race, presented by Scicon and the City of Drakenstein, takes place in around the city of Paarl in the Western Cape from March 5 to 9. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260,3],"tags":[1743,1946,3173,1757,1747,1919],"class_list":["post-16364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","category-more-sport","tag-asg-events","tag-bestmed-tour-of-good-hope","tag-frans-claes","tag-mountain-biking","tag-mtb","tag-tour-of-good-hope"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}