Overnight leaders Andrew Hill and Shaun-Nick Bester put the hammer down from the start to surge to stage and overall victory on the final day of the PwC Great Zuurberg Trek mountain-bike race at Addo on 27 May 2018.<\/p>\n
The TIB-Silverback-Best4Sport team won their second stage of the three-day event at the Zuurberg Mountain Village just outside Port Elizabeth to take the title in 8:53:46.<\/p>\n
After a sluggish start to the event, RSA Web’s Stuart Marais and Renay Groustra placed second on today’s 50km stage to rise to fourth in the general classification.<\/p>\n
Yesterday’s winners, Aiden Connelly and Rogan Smart (Bike Shop-Scott-Strocam), placed third to keep their second place in the standings in 9:02:05.<\/p>\n
East London’s Jason Peach and Jason Reed were fourth today to place third overall in 9:05:55.<\/p>\n
The women’s race was won by Ascendis Health-Spur’s Ariane Luthi and Robyn de Groot, who dominated the event from start to finish to relegate the experienced Theresa Ralph and Sarah Hill (Galileo Risk) into a distant second.<\/p>\n
It was the Durban-based Hill’s third triumph in four years after back-to-back titles in 2015 and 2016, while Bester, from Pretoria, was making his debut in the tough Eastern Cape race.<\/p>\n
The outcome represented a remarkable comeback by Hill and Bester after a serious mechanical on Saturday saw them lose all but two seconds of their nine-minute advantage.<\/p>\n
“It really was something of a miracle because we were able to secure the bolt we needed to fix Andrew’s problem from another rider who had also suffered a mechanical,” said Bester, who turned to mountain biking this season after a stint on the road in Europe.<\/p>\n
“After that delay, we never thought we would keep our lead but we just went as hard as we could from then on.<\/p>\n
“Saturday’s problem meant we were still stressing quite a bit for today’s stage and hoping that we would not have any further problems.<\/p>\n
“From the start, we decided just to ride as hard as possible to try to build up a lead in case anything went wrong.<\/p>\n
“We went hard on the climbs and were much less conservative on the descents.”<\/p>\n
Bester said he had enjoyed his debut at the PwC Great Zuurberg Trek.<\/p>\n
“The routes were great, with some excellent single-track sections and today the Hayterdale trails were really cool.<\/p>\n
“You can see the race organisers have put a lot of hard work into the event and I would recommend this to anyone out there.”<\/p>\n
Luthi was also delighted with her maiden event, especially after she had doubts about entering because of her limited time in SA.<\/p>\n
Although she lives in Stellenbosch, she races in Europe during their summer and returns tomorrow to continue her preparations for the UCI MTB World Marathon Championship in Italy in September.<\/p>\n
“I was only back for two weeks, but as it turns out this was a really worthwhile exercise and a true African experience.<\/p>\n
“There was the most amazing single-track today and we were able to stay in front, keeping it steady and enjoying the stage’s offering.”<\/p>\n
She said she had a really good connection with De Groot, a five-time national marathon champion.<\/p>\n
“It’s always better to race with someone with whom you have so much in common. She’s a champion and has so much experience of racing in South Africa.”<\/p>\n
Silverback Bikes’ defending champions Neill Ungerer and Yolande de Villiers completed a hat-trick of stage wins to take the mixed title for a second consecutive year in 9:21:39.<\/p>\n
Garmin’s Ben Melt Swanepoel and Yolandi du Toit, followed by Nicholas Webb and Kylie Hanekom, completed the podium.<\/p>\n
Results
\nStage three, 50km
\nMen<\/p>\n
1 Shaun-Nick Bester & Andrew Hill (TIB-Silverback-Best4Sport) 2:18:12
\n2 Renay Groustra & Stuart Marais (RSA Web) 2:22:51
\n3 Aidan Connelly & Rogan Smart (Bike Shop-Scott-Strocam) 2:26:29
\n4 Jason Peach & Jason Reed 2:27:30
\n5 Rila Gadabeni & Thabiso Rengane 2:36:00<\/p>\n
Women<\/p>\n
1 Ariane Luthi & Robyn de Groot (Ascendis Health-Spur) 2:40:17
\n2 Sarah Hill & Theresa Ralph (Galileo Risk) 2:43:03<\/p>\n
Mixed<\/p>\n
1 Neill Ungerer & Yolande de Villiers (Silverback Bikes) 2:32:39
\n2 Yolandi du Toit & Ben Melt Swanepoel (Team Garmin) 2:52:39
\n3 Nicholas Webb & Kylie Hanekom 2:54:45
\n4 Mark Willimott & Gail Willimott 2:58:25
\n5 Lester Tait & Andrea Shirley 2:59:24<\/p>\n
General classification<\/p>\n
Men<\/p>\n
1 Shaun-Nick Bester & Andrew Hill (TIB-Silverback-Best4Sport) 8:53:46
\n2 Aidan Connelly & Rogan Smart (Bike Shop-Scott-Strocam) 9:02:05
\n3 Jason Peach & Jason Reed 9:05:55
\n4 Renay Groustra & Stuart Marais (RSA Web) 9:12:43
\n5 Reinhard Zellhuber & Marc Fourie (Home Ice Cream-Garrun Insurance) 9:44:50<\/p>\n
Women<\/p>\n
1 Ariane Luthi & Robyn de Groot (Ascendis Health-Spur) 9:38:04
\n2 Sarah Hill & Theresa Ralph (Galileo Risk) 10:06:02<\/p>\n
Mixed<\/p>\n
1 Neill Ungerer & Yolande de Villiers (Silverback Bikes) 9:21:39
\n2 Ben Melt Swanepoel & Yolandi du Toit (Garmin) 10:07:33
\n3 Nicholas Webb & Kylie Hanekom 11:08:46
\n4 Lester Tait & Andrea Shirley 11:20:53
\n5 Mark Willimott & Gail Willimott 11:56:00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Overnight leaders Andrew Hill and Shaun-Nick Bester put the hammer down from the start to surge to stage and overall victory on the final day of the PwC Great Zuurberg Trek mountain-bike race at Addo on 27 May 2018. The TIB-Silverback-Best4Sport team won their second stage of the three-day event at the Zuurberg Mountain Village […]<\/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":[2447,2315,2305,3557,1234,2401,2579,3553,2624,2452],"class_list":["post-18800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","category-more-sport","tag-andrew-hill","tag-ariane-luthi","tag-great-zuurberg-trek","tag-neil-ungerer","tag-port-elizabeth","tag-pwc-great-zuurberg-trek","tag-robyn-de-groot","tag-shaun-nick-bester","tag-yolande-de-villiers","tag-zuurberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18800","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=18800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}