The international cycling body last week officially confirmed UCI status for the Takealot Tour of Good Hope, sparking a rising wave of interest in the March event.<\/p>\n
The tour, one of South Africa’s premier road races, takes place in the Cape Winelands from March 4 to 8, providing a showcase for both local and overseas riders to earn international ranking points.<\/p>\n
Although gaining UCI 2.2 status was a virtual formality for the race, ASG Events chief executive Erick Oosthuizen said they were delighted to have been officially given the green light.<\/p>\n
“It was really just a matter of waiting for the next UCI management meeting which took place last week and we received the confirmation on Friday,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The Tour of Good Hope was already on the map, but we believe this elevates it to another level.<\/p>\n
“Since it was announced my inbox has been flooded with teams wanting to participate, so we are just scrutinising them at the moment.<\/p>\n
“We have had interest from teams in France, Germany, United Arab Emirates and Mauritius, as well as quite a few African nations. It’s been quite amazing.”<\/p>\n
Oosthuizen added that there had been a lot of talk among the local teams as well and “with the Olympics coming up I think everybody is keen to get UCI points on the board”.<\/p>\n
The 2020 Olympic Games take place in Tokyo from July 24 to August 9 and this year acts as a qualification period until October.<\/p>\n
Cycling SA general manager Mike Bradley said it was one of the national body’s top priorities to create more opportunities for South African riders to earn UCI points.<\/p>\n
“The higher our riders rank internationally, the more we will have to qualify for the 2020 Olympics,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Having UCI status helps from a strategic point of view, allowing our riders to earn points in events close to home.”<\/p>\n
He added that it was exciting to have the Tour of Good Hope’s UCI status officially confirmed.<\/p>\n
“It gives a lot of our riders the chance to race against international riders on our home turf.<\/p>\n
“Earning UCI points is very important for professional teams such as Dimension Data, TEG ProCycling and ProTouch. Their goal is to get to the No 1 ranking in Africa, which opens up plenty of opportunities for them and potential invites to other races.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The international cycling body last week officially confirmed UCI status for the Takealot Tour of Good Hope, sparking a rising wave of interest in the March event. The tour, one of South Africa’s premier road races, takes place in the Cape Winelands from March 4 to 8, providing a showcase for both local and overseas […]<\/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":[1743,3806,3011],"class_list":["post-25863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-asg-events","tag-takealot-tour-of-good-hope","tag-uci-status"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25863","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=25863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}