Presented by Rudy Project, the one-day, three-stage race in Mbombela in Mpumalanga will be contested over 150km with 2 900m of vertical ascent.<\/p>\n
Although he has not experienced the concept of a three-stage race in a single day, Davids is excited about the event and is looking forward to another examination of his road credentials.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old from Fourways in Johannesburg has made a successful switch from mountain bike trails to the tar, winning the 947 Challenge last year and finishing second in the Mpumalanga Cycle Tour in January.<\/p>\n
“I’m doing most of the road events for the first time and, although I have not ridden the Jock Classic, I know quite a bit about the region from the Mpumalanga Tour,” said the former junior, U23 and elite African continental mountain bike champion.<\/p>\n
“I have really just been focused on the past weekend and only now am I looking ahead to the next event.”<\/p>\n
From discussions with his team-mates, Davids said he realised the second stage could be influential in the final outcome.<\/p>\n
The 45km stretch between White River and Sabie has a fairly flat start before the climb up Spitskop, which is followed by a 10km run-in to Sabie.<\/p>\n
“Most of my colleagues have done the Jock Classic and they all say the Spitskop section into Sabie can make or break the race,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I know there is also the Long Tom Pass (over 12km) on the final leg, but that is quite far from the finish, so the push up Spitskop should play a big role.<\/p>\n
“It will probably be important to try to establish a gap there as it is the most challenging part of the route, and then try to consolidate on the final stage back into Nelspruit.”<\/p>\n
Although he said RoadCover would be represented by a fairly small team in the Bestmed Jock Classic, Davids was happy with their conditioning.<\/p>\n
“It’s important to have a good team behind you and we are all riding well together and committed to the cause.<\/p>\n
“We haven’t really strategized a lot at this stage and although we will have a plan, we often improvise on the road.”<\/p>\n
Davids acknowledged one of the challenges would be to keep warm between the stages, which start at 6.30am (42km), 9.30am (45km) and 1pm (63km).<\/p>\n
“I have never experienced this sort of race before but Brad (Potgieter) and Clint (Hendricks) have done it and have given me some pointers,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I’m sure I will be spending some time on the rollers between stages so you don’t switch off completely and stay well prepared for the next stage.”<\/p>\n
This year the Jock Classic, regarded as the country’s toughest one-day road race, will be held separately from the three-day Bestmed Jock Tour, which now takes place in mid-September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Presented by Rudy Project, the one-day, three-stage race in Mbombela in Mpumalanga will be contested over 150km with 2 900m of vertical ascent. Although he has not experienced the concept of a three-stage race in a single day, Davids is excited about the event and is looking forward to another examination of his road credentials. […]<\/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":[1743,2706,2335],"class_list":["post-8009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-more-sport","tag-asg-events","tag-bestmed-jock-classic","tag-brendon-davids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8009","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=8009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}