Marco Joubert was pleased to be back on the winner’s podium after a long struggle with injury as he successfully defended his title in the Bestmed-Makro mountain-bike race near Port Elizabeth today.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old, who grew up in PE but now lives in Stellenbosch, defeated Jason Meaton in a sprint finish in the 70km race held at the Hopewell Conservation Estate, St Albans.<\/p>\n
Riding for Imbuko-Momsen, Joubert crossed the line in 2:51:47, with Meaton just a second behind. Grant Daly was third in 3:04:29<\/p>\n
Collarbone injuries kept Joubert sidelined for nearly three months earlier this year and he said today’s victory was a boost to his confidence.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a long struggle with the shoulder injury so it feels good to be back on form and taking the win,” he said.<\/p>\n
He put the hammer down from the start and managed to break away from the pack, but said some confusion over the route markings meant he had to change his strategy.<\/p>\n
“After setting a high pace and getting away early on I didn’t want to get lost so I waited for Jason and Grant, who were second and third.<\/p>\n
“We rode together for a while until I managed to get away again. But then the same thing happened so I had to wait and Jason and I worked together from then.<\/p>\n
“We waited it out for the sprint and I managed to edge him in the final surge for the line.”<\/p>\n
In the women’s race Anriette Schoeman, of Port Elizabeth, regained the title she won two years ago, also managing to break away from her challengers early on.<\/p>\n
She crossed the line in 3:30:19 and was followed home by Michele Scowby (3:58:16) and Gene Keet (4:06:51).<\/p>\n
This was the 41-year-old’s fourth mountain-bike title at the race in five years and came after she won last week’s road race for the 18th time.<\/p>\n
Although the weather was better than last week’s conditions when rain and wind battered the riders in the 106km road race, Schoeman said the mountain-bike event represented a tough challenge.<\/p>\n
“With all the recent rain the routes were quite muddy so that made it a testing ride,” she said. “But then that is all part of mountain-biking.”<\/p>\n
The Africa Silks-Bestmed rider added that there was a lot of single-track on the route and she managed to get a gap early in the race.<\/p>\n
“But there was a route glitch at one stage so I had to turn around and rejoin the group.<\/p>\n
“However, I managed to get away again and was able to pace it nicely back to the finish line to take the win.”<\/p>\n
Results
\nMen
\n70km<\/p>\n
1 Marco Joubert 2:51:47
\n2 Jason Meaton 2:51:48
\n3 Grant Daly 3:04:29
\n4 Luthando Fatyi 3:08:17
\n5 Nikola Galic 3:28:24
\n35km
\n1 CJ Bosman 1:25:13
\n2 Ryno Gerber 1:27:30
\n3 Reinhard Strumpfer 1:30:58
\n20km
\n1 Alessandro Fanicchi 1:05:07
\n2 Jared Mark Loenen 1:05:09
\n3 Tiaan Minnaar 1:05:11
\nWomen
\n70km
\n1 Anriette Schoeman 3:30:19
\n2 Michele Scowby 3:58:16
\n3 Gene Keet 4:06:51
\n35km
\n1 Mischka Strydom 1:58:50
\n2 Eliza Strydom 2:01:22
\n3 Ashleigh Mayhead 2:04:13<\/p>\n
20km<\/p>\n
1 Sarah Brown 1:09:51
\n2 Annamarie Fouche 1:15:39
\n3 Roxy von Gordon 1:17:52<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marco Joubert was pleased to be back on the winner’s podium after a long struggle with injury as he successfully defended his title in the Bestmed-Makro mountain-bike race near Port Elizabeth today. The 21-year-old, who grew up in PE but now lives in Stellenbosch, defeated Jason Meaton in a sprint finish in the 70km race […]<\/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],"tags":[2122,3715,2631,1757,1747],"class_list":["post-22313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-anriette-schoeman","tag-bestmed-makro-mountain-bike-race","tag-marco-joubert","tag-mountain-biking","tag-mtb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22313","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=22313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}