An-Li Kachelhoffer had more than just personal ambitions on her mind when she made her move to win the Tour Durban in KwaZulu-Natal over the weekend.<\/p>\n
The former national women’s road champion, who joined Team Bestmed-ASG this year as leader and mentor to the younger riders, was also looking after the fortunes of teammate Zanele Tshoko.<\/p>\n
Kachelhoffer sent Tshoko up the road halfway through the race and then bridged the gap to form a two-man breakaway at the front that would ultimately give the team a one-two finish.<\/p>\n
“I kept pushing Zanele to continue opening the gap between us and the bunch,” said the 29-year-old.<\/p>\n
“I could see she looked at me with these eyes that said she can’t push anymore, but I kept telling her to dig deeper and stick it out.<\/p>\n
“This weekend is something she’ll hopefully remember for a long time because I hope it’s had some positive impact on her.”<\/p>\n
Kachelhoffer said the plan was never to pull the race apart, but rather to put Tshoko in a position to ensure the best possible result for the team.<\/p>\n
“My role is to help the younger riders change their style of riding, to push them to be more aggressive and to try something new.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been racing overseas for almost seven years so this year has been about giving back my knowledge.”<\/p>\n
She said she enjoyed working with the team in a mentorship role as the girls had a strong desire to improve.<\/p>\n
“It’s important for me to encourage them and keep them motivated as we go forward.”<\/p>\n
Kachelhoffer said Tshoko was one of the riders who had shown vast improvement during her stint with the team.<\/p>\n
“She is a talent for the future. She’s come on in leaps and bounds in training and this weekend showed that.”<\/p>\n
Chante van der Merwe and Skye Davidson were two other riders about to make an impact, said Kachelhoffer.<\/p>\n
“I love to see change and I can definitely see that on the team. The personal reward behind being a part of this is so satisfying.”<\/p>\n
She said her role extended beyond the technical aspect of racing as she also assisted her teammates with management issues.<\/p>\n
“Even though I’ve been with the team for a while now there are still a few learning curves, not just for me, but for everyone.<\/p>\n
“With my experience, I find it easy to approach management. Sometimes the younger girls don’t, so that’s where I can help.”<\/p>\n
Kachelhoffer finished third overall in the five-day Bestmed Tour of Good Hope in March, her first major race with the team, and believed she had settled in well since then.<\/p>\n
“This year has been frustrating at times, but I definitely can say I’ve had a good year so far. I like the team and I’m really in a happy place.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An-Li Kachelhoffer had more than just personal ambitions on her mind when she made her move to win the Tour Durban in KwaZulu-Natal over the weekend. The former national women’s road champion, who joined Team Bestmed-ASG this year as leader and mentor to the younger riders, was also looking after the fortunes of teammate Zanele […]<\/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":[3],"tags":[2154,1745,1788,2068,1918,2596],"class_list":["post-5219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-more-sport","tag-an-li-kachelhoffer","tag-cycling","tag-cycling-news","tag-cycling-race","tag-team-bestmed-asg","tag-tour-durban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219","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=5219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}