Andrew Hill and Shaun-Nick Bester exerted pressure from early on to emerge as the team to beat after the first stage of the PwC Great Zuurberg Trek mountain-bike race on 25 May 2018.<\/p>\n
The three-day event got under way in good conditions from the Zuurberg Mountain Village, about 70km outside Port Elizabeth, with competitors facing 71km with 1 300m of ascent.<\/p>\n
The duo, racing in the colours of TIB-Silverback-Best4Sport, completed the course in 2:46:05 to establish a handy nine-minute lead in the overall standings.<\/p>\n
Reinhard Zellhuber and Marc Fourie (Home Ice Cream-Garrun Insurance) crossed the line in second, closely followed by Aiden Connelly and Rogan Smart (Bike Shop-Scott-Strocam).<\/p>\n
The women’s pairing of Swiss star Ariane Luthi and multiple national mountain-bike champion Robyn de Groot (Ascendis Health Spur) swept to first place in a time of 3:04:11.<\/p>\n
They were followed home by Theresa Ralph and Sarah Hill (Galileo Risk), with Imke van der Westhuyzen and Jennifer Cilliers in a distant third.<\/p>\n
After charging ahead in the first 10km of the stage, Hill said they tackled the Seven Dwarfs Drop into the river valley fairly conservatively.<\/p>\n
“On this technical descent Reinhard and Marc, probably taking a few more chances than we did, closed the gap,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But on the climb to the first water point we were able to put the pressure on again and managed to create a nice gap.”<\/p>\n
From that point on Hill, who won the race in 2015 and 2016, said they coasted comfortably along the flatter sections while adding some pressure where they could.<\/p>\n
“It was a case of rolling along, but with some force where possible, while also making sure we kept something in the tank for tomorrow,” he added, referring to the 88km queen stage.<\/p>\n
The final outcome was everything they could have hoped for, he said.<\/p>\n
“Shaun-Nick is very strong so it’s great to have someone like that with you. He has good experience of riding tours and knows exactly what we need to do in a stage race such as this.”<\/p>\n
Luthi, who took the chance to enter the PwC Great Zuurberg Trek while on a short break from racing in Europe, said they were delighted with their efforts in the opening stage.<\/p>\n
“The bunch went quite hard at the start, but we eventually managed to settle into a nice pace and were able to get ahead of the rest,” said the two-time Cape Epic women’s champion.<\/p>\n
“The conditions were really good because there was a bit of rain last night and this settled the course and stopped it from being too dusty.”<\/p>\n
Luthi, who is partnering De Groot for the first time, said they were gelling nicely as a team.<\/p>\n
“We are both professional riders and we know there is no need to kill ourselves at this stage.”<\/p>\n
Defending champions Neill Ungerer and Yolande de Villiers (Silverback-Morelo) set the pace in the mixed category, finishing in 3:00:49.<\/p>\n
They will take a 13-minute advantage over Ben Melt Swanepoel and Yolandi du Toit (Garmin) into stage two. Lester Tait and Andrea Shirley (Ethiopian Bodybuilding) are third.<\/p>\n
The second stage will take the field over a challenging course of 88km, including 1 750m of climbing.<\/p>\n
Results
\nStage one, 71km
\nMen<\/p>\n
1 Andrew Hill & Shaun-Nick Bester (TIB-Silverback-Best4Sport) 2:46:05
\n2 Reinhard Zellhuber & Marc Fourie (Home Ice Cream-Garrun Insurance) 2:54:14
\n3 Aidan Connelly & Rogan Smart ((Bike Shop-Scott-Strocam) 2:54:47
\n4 Jason Peach & Jason Reed (Saddle and Cleats) 2:54:48
\n5 Renay Groustra & Stuart Marais (RSA Web) 3:04:34<\/p>\n
Women<\/p>\n
1 Robyn de Groot & Ariane Luthi (Ascendis Health-Spur) 3:04:11
\n2 Theresa Ralph & Sarah Hill (Galileo Risk) 3:18:10
\n3 Imke van der Westhuyzen & Jennifer Cilliers (Talking Heads) 4:32:23<\/p>\n
Mixed<\/p>\n
1 Neill Ungerer & Yolande de Villiers (Silverback Bikes) 3:00:49
\n2 Yolandi du Toit & Ben Melt Swanepoel (Garmin) 3:13:31
\n3 Lester Tait & Andrea Shirley (Ethiopian Bodybuilding) 3:38:32
\n4 Nicholas Webb & Kylie Hanekom (Bike Hub) 3:39:49
\n5 Heather Slabbert & Roan Rossouw 3:52:39 (Totally Stoked)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Andrew Hill and Shaun-Nick Bester exerted pressure from early on to emerge as the team to beat after the first stage of the PwC Great Zuurberg Trek mountain-bike race on 25 May 2018. The three-day event got under way in good conditions from the Zuurberg Mountain Village, about 70km outside Port Elizabeth, with competitors facing […]<\/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":[2447,2315,1944,1945,1757,3557,2401,2579,3553,2624,3558],"class_list":["post-18733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","category-more-sport","tag-andrew-hill","tag-ariane-luthi","tag-mountain-bike","tag-mountain-bike-race","tag-mountain-biking","tag-neil-ungerer","tag-pwc-great-zuurberg-trek","tag-robyn-de-groot","tag-shaun-nick-bester","tag-yolande-de-villiers","tag-zuurberg-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18733","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=18733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}