Confident in his finishing ability, Reynard Butler powered his way to back-to-back one-day classic victories at the Bestmed Berge en Dale road race near Krugersdorp in Gauteng on 24 February 2018.<\/p>\n
With excellent support from his team, the 29-year-old ProTouch rider added the 107km feature race title to his Ride for Sight victory in Boksburg last weekend.<\/p>\n
Butler crossed the line at Cradlestone Mall in Muldersdrift in 2:30:37, edging out Calvin Beneke (Luso AC\/DC Dynamics) by a second, with Flavio Venceslau (Gauteng Track Academy) third in the same time.<\/p>\n
The Demacon women’s team continued to dominate the South African scene with newly crowned national road champion Carla Oberholzer picking up her third title of the year.<\/p>\n
She also used her power to shade Yzette Oelofse (Bestmed) in a sprint finish in 3:10:39. Third went to former Olympian Joanna van de Winkel (Cycle Nation-Sandton City).<\/p>\n
Butler said his team did a great job of controlling the action throughout and setting him up for the finish.<\/p>\n
“Going into the last kilometre we had two of our team, Myles van Musschenbroek and Gustav Basson, leading,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I know that Gustav has a nice kick so I used him to my advantage. He led me off with about 250 metres to go and I had the power at the end to finish off.”<\/p>\n
After last week’s win, Butler said he felt confident of his form in the dash to the line.<\/p>\n
“I knew my sprint legs were there and I felt good during the course of the race.<\/p>\n
“It was an aggressive and hard race; I knew the other guys would be tired and I was able to finish it off.”<\/p>\n
Butler said the race came down to a breakaway group of about 25 riders that formed at around the 80km mark as they passed through the Cradle of Humankind.<\/p>\n
Although the ProTouch riders put in several attacks, he said everything stayed together until the grand finale and he praised his teammates for their efforts in delivering the victory.<\/p>\n
“We couldn’t ask for much more at the beginning of the year,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The guys have really picked up their game from the beginning of the year and our confidence is high at this stage.”<\/p>\n
In the women’s race, Oberholzer said she overcame a tough start on the first climb to eventually produce a big effort to pip Oelofse on the line.<\/p>\n
“Joanna made it really hard up the first climb and we basically just covered her,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I struggled with the start and after the climb I was not feeling well. But I recovered during the race and at the halfway mark I started feeling better.”<\/p>\n
She said a group of eight broke away on the climb and they were joined by four more riders on the descent.<\/p>\n
“From there we just rolled through the race and coming into the finish, it was really slow.<\/p>\n
“My teammate Kim le Court then opened up with about 400m to go and Yzette got onto her wheel.<\/p>\n
“I managed to get onto Yzette’s wheel and when I saw her go past Kim I knew I had to put in one last effort to get past her.<\/p>\n
“A sprint finish is always a bit of gamble and it was a close one today.”<\/p>\n
Oberholzer, who, like Butler, triumphed at Ride for Sight, said it was another great outcome for the team in the event which is presented by Optimum Financial Services.<\/p>\n
“We really worked together very well at the end.”<\/p>\n
Demacon also triumphed in the Fast One in January through former national champion Lynette Burger.<\/p>\n
In a tragic incident, before the start of the race this morning, 41-year-old Nino Oppel of Johannesburg was struck from behind by an unidentified vehicle. He was heading to the start from Pinehaven towards Roodepoort. The vehicle did not stop.<\/p>\n
Although medics reached the rider within less than a minute of the incident and tried to stabilise him, he was declared dead at Pinehaven Hospital about five hours later.<\/p>\n
ASG Events race director Darren Herbst said they sent their condolences to the family.<\/p>\n
“This is a very difficult situation for his family and we offer our heartfelt support to them,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We make every effort to secure the safety of the riders at all our events. This is very tragic.”<\/p>\n
Results<\/p>\n
107km<\/p>\n
Elite men<\/p>\n
1 Reynard Butler 2:30:37
\n2 Calvin Beneke 2:30:38
\n3 Flavio Venceslau 2:30:38
\n4 Bradley Potgieter 2:30:38
\n5 Jan Montshioa 2:30:38<\/p>\n
Open women<\/p>\n
1 Carla Oberholzer 3:10:39
\n2 Yzette Oelofse 3:10:39
\n3 Joanna van de Winkel 3:10:40
\n4 Kim le Court 3:10:41
\n5 Desray Neale Sebregts 3:10:42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Confident in his finishing ability, Reynard Butler powered his way to back-to-back one-day classic victories at the Bestmed Berge en Dale road race near Krugersdorp in Gauteng on 24 February 2018. With excellent support from his team, the 29-year-old ProTouch rider added the 107km feature race title to his Ride for Sight victory in Boksburg […]<\/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":[1743,2184,3175,2205,1846,1884,2566],"class_list":["post-16463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","category-more-sport","tag-asg-events","tag-berge-en-dale","tag-bestmed-berge-en-dale-championship","tag-carla-oberholzer","tag-gauteng","tag-krugersdorp","tag-reynard-butler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16463","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=16463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}