HB Kruger and Matt Beers timed their attack to perfection to snatch the stage win on the second day of the Liberty Winelands Encounter mountain-bike race in Franschhoek today.<\/p>\n
The ASG-NAD pair outsprinted stage one winners and overnight leaders Gert Heyns and Arno du Toit at the end of a 48km loop from the Le Franschhoek Hotel and back.<\/p>\n
Kruger, from Paarl, and Beers, from Kenilworth in Cape Town, crossed the line in 1:42:09 with the DSV Pro Cycling duo three seconds adrift.<\/p>\n
Dylan Rebello and Marco Joubert of Imbuko-Momsen completed the podium.<\/p>\n
Heyns and Du Toit’s combined time of 3:34:28 puts them just under two minutes ahead of Kruger and Beers in the general classification with one day to go. Rebello and Joubert are in third.<\/p>\n
Kruger, who won the title alongside the now retired Waylon Woolcock last year, said it was a quick and aggressive stage, “with a lot less climbing than we thought”.<\/p>\n
“There was a 10km neutral zone on the tar until we turned up Matoppie Hill, which is a steepish, rocky climb,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We had a good tempo and Matt and myself, along with Gert and Arno, managed to get away as we went up that section.<\/p>\n
“I did drop off slightly at one stage, but we managed to get back to Gert and Arno at the top and we rode together for the rest of the way.”<\/p>\n
Describing it as a “flattish, rough course”, Kruger, who won the seven-day Liberty TransCape MTB Encounter with Stuart Marais in February, said it was difficult to make a move to create a gap.<\/p>\n
“We raced together, not pushing too hard, but making sure we were checking each other out.<\/p>\n
“Coming into the finish we saw an opportunity to go for a stage win and we came sprinting out of the last single-track.<\/p>\n
“This was in the last kilometre and Arno came around us but Matt and I knew we just had to stay ahead of Gert and we were able to do that.”<\/p>\n
Kruger said although time was running out, they were still focused on making up time on the final stage.<\/p>\n
“The stages are relatively short so it’s really difficult to create a big gap,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But tomorrow has some testing areas, too, so we will definitely not just give it [victory] to them.<\/p>\n
“We will be trying our best to see what opportunities arise to make up some time. We are definitely keen to win what is a very special event.”<\/p>\n
Kruger fell ill after last month’s Cape Epic and was on antibiotics for a period.<\/p>\n
“So yesterday was a bit of a shock to the system, but my partner Matt is looking really good so it’s nice just to sit behind him and follow his moves,” he said.<\/p>\n
In the mixed category, overnight leaders Matthew Stamatis and Samantha Sanders (Home Ice Cream-dormakaba) took stage honours in 1:56:18.<\/p>\n
They finished ahead of Carmen Buchacher and Paris Basson, with Everett and Anna Haywood third.<\/p>\n
The stage winners consolidated their overall lead with their combined time of 4:02:50 giving them a buffer of more than half an hour over Buchacher and Basson.<\/p>\n
Louise Ferreira and Marleen Lourens continued to dominate the women’s category, winning the stage in 2:13:36 to increase their sizeable lead in the overall standings.<\/p>\n
They were followed home today by Ilse Viljoen and Jana Kruger, with Alta Kriegler and Sunette Beyers third.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow’s final stage of the Liberty Winelands Encounter, presented by STANLIB, will be contested over 50km between Le Franschhoek Hotel and Nederburg Wine Estate near Paarl.<\/p>\n
Results
\nStage two, 48km
\nMen<\/p>\n
1 Matt Beers & HB Kruger (ASG-NAD) 1:42:09
\n2 Gert Heyns & Arno du Toit (DSV Pro Cycling) 1:42:12
\n3 Marco Joubert & Dylan Rebello (Imbuko-Momsen) 1:46:32
\n4 David Garrett & Craig Gerber (Western Racing) 1:54:42
\n5 Leon Boshoff & Daniel Pikker (Edge Telematics) 1:59:18<\/p>\n
Women<\/p>\n
1 Louise Ferreira & Marleen Lourens (Louise-Marleen) 2:13:36
\n2 Ilse Viljoen & Jana Kruger (Companero) 2:25:49
\n3 Alta Kriegler & Sunette Beyers (Pool Nurse) 2:42:23<\/p>\n
Mixed<\/p>\n
1 Matthew Stamatis & Samantha Sanders (Home Ice Cream-dormakaba) 1:56:18
\n2 Carmen Buchacher & Paris Basson (dormakaba) 2:13:50
\n3 Everett Haywood & Anna Haywood (Fu King Fast) 2:31:26
\n4 John Soper & Michelle van Aswegen (Gurit-AMT Composites) 2:36:31
\n5 Nick Dickens & Alexa Terblanche (The Avengers) 2:41:29
\n6 Alan Botten & Paige Botten (Upstream) 2:43:15<\/p>\n
General classification<\/p>\n
Men<\/p>\n
1 Gert Heyns & Arno du Toit (DSV Pro Cycling) 3:34:28
\n2 Matt Beers & HB Kruger (ASG-NAD) 3:36:33
\n3 Marco Joubert & Dylan Rebello (Imbuko-Momsen) 3:40:59
\n4 Richard Simpson & Alexander Rohrer (First Ascent) 3:55:30
\n5 David Garrett & Craig Gerber (Western Racing) 4:02:17<\/p>\n
Women<\/p>\n
1 Louise Ferreira & Marleen Lourens (Louise-Marleen) 4:36:20
\n2 Ilse Viljoen & Jana Kruger (Companero) 5:10:12
\n3 Alta Kriegler & Sunette Beyers (Pool Nurse) 5:43:46<\/p>\n
Mixed<\/p>\n
1 Matthew Stamatis & Samantha Sanders (Home Ice Cream-dormakaba) 4:02:50
\n2 Carmen Buchacher & Paris Basson (dormakaba) 4:36:38
\n3 Everett Haywood & Anna Haywood (Fu King Fast) 5:10:29
\n4 John Soper & Michelle van Aswegen (Gurit-AMT Composites) 5:23:54
\n5 Nick Dickens & Alexa Terblanche (The Avengers) 5:39:43<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HB Kruger and Matt Beers timed their attack to perfection to snatch the stage win on the second day of the Liberty Winelands Encounter mountain-bike race in Franschhoek today. The ASG-NAD pair outsprinted stage one winners and overnight leaders Gert Heyns and Arno du Toit at the end of a 48km loop from the Le […]<\/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":[2721,1743,2720,2573,2632,2377,3437,1945,1757,1747,2417],"class_list":["post-17465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","category-more-sport","tag-arno-du-toit","tag-asg-events","tag-gert-heyns","tag-hb-kruger","tag-liberty","tag-liberty-winelands-encounter","tag-matt-beers","tag-mountain-bike-race","tag-mountain-biking","tag-mtb","tag-winelands-encounter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17465","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=17465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}