The young Plettenberg Bay team of Aidan Connelly and Rogan Smart seized the moment to claim victory on the second stage of the PwC Great Zuurberg Trek mountain-bike race on 26 May 2018.<\/p>\n
The Bikeshop-Scott-Strocam pair blitzed the tough 88km course in a time of 3:40:49 to beat Jason Peach and Jason Read and Renay Groustra and Stuart Marais (RSA Web) to the finish at the Zuurberg Mountain Village outside Port Elizabeth.<\/p>\n
Overnight leaders Andrew Hill and Shaun-Nick Bester (TIB-Silverback-Best4Sport), who set the early pace, suffered a serious mechanical before the first water point and later a puncture to cross the line in fourth.<\/p>\n
They were able to maintain their lead in the general classification, but their nine-minute cushion was slashed to two seconds over the Plett riders – setting up a thrilling grand finale.<\/p>\n
Peach and Reed are third overall, just under three minutes off the pace.<\/p>\n
Connelly, 19, said he and his 20-year-old teammate were thrilled with the outcome, even though it “was completely unexpected”.<\/p>\n
“It was really amazing to come home first. This is our first ever stage win in a major race.”<\/p>\n
He said their game plan was to try and stick with the leaders “until we blow”.<\/p>\n
Hill and Bester broke away to take an early lead until they suffered their mechanical, which allowed a number of teams to pass them at the first water point.<\/p>\n
“At that point we formed a group in front with Jason and Renay and Reinhard [Zellhuber] and Marc [Fourie],” he explained, while Reed and Peach caught them later.<\/p>\n
The four teams stuck together for a large part of the stage until Reed and Peach gapped their breakaway companions on the way down Gower’s Gauntlet with about 25km to go.<\/p>\n
They were eventually reeled in and dropped by Connelly and Smart with 14km left.<\/p>\n
“Once we managed to overtake them we put our heads down and time-trialled to the finish,” said Connelly, admitting they did not know what to expect in their maiden appearance at the PwC Great Zuurberg Trek.<\/p>\n
“We weren’t really thinking of a stage win and are just tackling each challenge as it presents itself.<\/p>\n
“When we saw our chance today we decided to give it a go and everything worked out perfectly. We couldn’t be happier.”<\/p>\n
He said they would take the same approach into tomorrow’s final stage over a relatively short but tricky 50km.<\/p>\n
“Today’s queen stage definitely lived up to its name. It was super tough and I had some cramps towards the end.<\/p>\n
“But we will go through our normal recovery process and just see what happens tomorrow.<\/p>\n
“We have no real expectations and it looks like quite a fun day, so we want to go out there and enjoy it.”<\/p>\n
Swiss ace Ariane Luthi and Robyn de Groot (Ascendis Health-Spur) extended their overall lead in the women’s section after getting the better of Theresa Ralph and Sarah Hill (Galileo Risk).<\/p>\n
De Groot, from George, said they were able to keep a nice tempo on what turned out to be a testing day.<\/p>\n
“There was a lot of hard work during today’s stage and not many easy sections.<\/p>\n
“But it has been a really good experience riding with Ariane (Stellenbosch) in these conditions, which included some really good single-track.”<\/p>\n
Neill Ungerer and Yolande de Villiers (Silverback Bikes) won their second stage in the mixed category to take a commanding lead in the overall standings.<\/p>\n
They were followed home by Ben Melt Swanepoel and Yolandi du Toit (Garmin) and Nicholas Webb and Kylie Hanekom (Bike Hub).<\/p>\n
Results
\nStage two, 88km
\nMen<\/p>\n
1 Aidan Connelly & Rogan Smart (Bike Shop-Scott-Strocam) 3:40:49
\n2 Jason Peach & Jason Reed (Saddle and Cleats) 3:43:47
\n3 Renay Groustra & Stuart Marais (RSA Web) 3:45:18
\n4 Andrew Hill & Shaun-Nick Bester (TIB-Silverback-Best4Sport) 3:49:29
\n5 Andrew McLean & Joel Stransky (Cycle Lab) 3:58:58<\/p>\n
Women<\/p>\n
1 Robyn de Groot & Ariane Luthi (Ascendis Health-Spur) 3:53:36
\n2 Theresa Ralph & Sarah Hill (Galileo Risk) 4:04:49<\/p>\n
Mixed<\/p>\n
1 Neill Ungerer & Yolande de Villiers (Silverback Bikes) 3:48:11
\n2 Yolandi du Toit & Ben Melt Swanepoel (Garmin) 4:01:23
\n3 Nicholas Webb & Kylie Hanekom (Bike Hub) 4:34:12
\n4 Lester Tait & Andrea Shirley (Ethiopian Bodybuilding) 4:42:57
\n5 Mark & Gail Willimott (The Willi’s) 4:54:51<\/p>\n
General classification<\/p>\n
Men<\/p>\n
1 Shaun-Nick Bester & Andrew Hill (TIB-Silverback-Best4Sport) 6:35:34
\n2 Aidan Connelly & Rogan Smart (Bike Shop-Scott-Strocam) 6:35:36
\n3 Jason Peach & Jason Reed (Saddle and Cleats) 6:38:25
\n4 Renay Groustra & Stuart Marais (RSA Web) 6:49:52
\n5 Reinhard Zellhuber & Marc Fourie (Home Ice Cream-Garrun Insurance) 6:55:57<\/p>\n
Women<\/p>\n
1 Ariane Luthi & Robyn de Groot (Ascendis Health-Spur) 6:57:47
\n2 Sarah Hill & Theresa Ralph (Galileo Risk) 7:22:59<\/p>\n
Mixed<\/p>\n
1 Neill Ungerer & Yolande de Villiers (Silverback Bikes) 6:49:00
\n2 Ben Melt Swanepoel & Yolandi du Toit (Team Garmin) 7:14:54
\n3 Nicholas Webb & Kylie Hanekom (Bike Hub) 8:14:01
\n4 Lester Tait & Andrea Shirley (Ethiopian Bodybuilding) 8:21:29
\n5 Roan Rossouw & Heather Slabbert (Totally Stoked) 8:52:19<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The young Plettenberg Bay team of Aidan Connelly and Rogan Smart seized the moment to claim victory on the second stage of the PwC Great Zuurberg Trek mountain-bike race on 26 May 2018. The Bikeshop-Scott-Strocam pair blitzed the tough 88km course in a time of 3:40:49 to beat Jason Peach and Jason Read and Renay […]<\/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":[3560,2447,2315,2305,1945,1757,3557,2401,2579,3561,3553,2624,2452],"class_list":["post-18755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","category-more-sport","tag-aidan-connelly","tag-andrew-hill","tag-ariane-luthi","tag-great-zuurberg-trek","tag-mountain-bike-race","tag-mountain-biking","tag-neil-ungerer","tag-pwc-great-zuurberg-trek","tag-robyn-de-groot","tag-rogan-smart","tag-shaun-nick-bester","tag-yolande-de-villiers","tag-zuurberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18755","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=18755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}