On Sunday November 6, the sun shone brightly over 4 500 cyclists riding in central South Africa’s largest race, a seeding event ahead of the Cape Argus Pick ‘n Pay Cycle Tour 2012.
The 11th Cycle Classic was sponsored by MTN and OFM, with the assistance of the Free State Provincial Government, which facilitated partial road closures in several instances, making the event one of the safest in South Africa. And since R80 000 in prize money was up for grabs, at 6am the elite riders wasted no time in making their intentions clear.
The 99km route featured a number of changes, the most significant being the rerouting of three major climbs to the final 30km. Despite a number of initial attacks, the peloton was still together coming onto the N1 at 20km. At 23km, 20 riders had split off the front, but they were reeled in at the 34km mark.
Early on though, a number of riders were already finding the pace too hot to handle and were starting to come off the back. At the ‘u-turn’ on the N1 near the Caltex ‘pitstop’ garage, the Free State’s Petrus Fourie (Mecer) in blue and white lead the group over the bridge and down the other side, heading back towards Bloemfontein.
A fairly stiff crosswind was not making things easy for the peloton. Shortly after 42km, on Andries Pretorius Street, a group of 15 had split off the front in one of the decisive moves of the day. At 49km the gap had been extended to 40 seconds and then four riders split off the front group. These were Bakke (Bonitas), Maree (Sasol), Wesseman (MTN Qhubeka) and Ward (H-Vac).
At 62km the gap had increased slightly to 45 seconds while two teams, RSAWeb and Cape Town Market, lead the chase. With only 29km to go, and approaching the climbs, the gap had been reduced to just half a minute. But after the tough climbs of Albrecht and Lucas Steyn, the elastic band keeping the peloton in the hunt seemed to have snapped.
The break opened the gap to 70 seconds with 14km remaining. While it seemed at this point as though the race was a done deal, stitched up by the four breakaway riders, two riders came through strongly from the peloton: Kachelhoffer (Bonitas) and 22 year old Reinardt Janse van Rensburg (MTN Qhubeka). With 5km remaining, the breakaway had swelled to six riders, meaning it was anyone’s race.
Wesseman attacked, with Bakke chasing and the bunch sniffing for scraps 35 seconds adrift. The breakaway continued to play a dangerous cat and mouse game while the bunch gained steadily on them. By the last kilometer Wesseman was still in front, maintaining a high pace for his teammate Van Rensburg into a strong, tricky headwind.
With 400 metres remaining, David Maree put in a desperate last effort, passing the front pack at speed and catching the front riders a little unawares. Maree managed to gain a 5 to10 metre gap on his rivals, but in the last hundred metres the Virginia-born Van Rensburg pushed ahead to win, clocking in at 2 hours 13 minutes.
Speaking about his victory afterwards, Van Rensburg, who started cycling competitively at the age of 13, admitted that he had come into the race as a favourite. “Yes, last year I was a favourite too but I only finished third.”
Earlier this year Van Rensburg won a stage in Morocco and in the local Clover Lowveld Tour. Asked what the toughest aspect of the race was, Van Rensburg said, “The wind was rough and putting the climbs at the end made the race a lot more difficult. It makes the race more interesting for us.”
While the MTN Qhubeka rider (and a previous South African and African Time Trial champion) was due to depart for Africa Champs in Eritrea later the same evening, Van Rensburg spoke of his fondness for the route and for Bloemfontein. No doubt his sentiments were shared by the thousands of fun riders, young and old, who also made Bloemfontein’s boulevards their own.
The 36km race went off at 7.55am. One of the riders in this event was Aids survivor Andre van Zijl. Van Zijl, who has been riding around South Africa for the past few weeks and clocked up 32 000km (raising R12-million for his global Aids prevention charity) finished his 36km in the top 20, in a time of just over 1 hour and five minutes.
Meanwhile, Nashua Toyota’s Ashleigh Moolman, who was born in Bloemfontein and attended Eunice Girls School, won the women’s race. Commenting on her win, Moolman said it was great to win on “home soil”. Moolman acknowledged her team for “riding really hard” and “making the racing” with numerous breakaway attempts.
She credits teammate Joe Vanderwinkel with frustrating the ambitions of contenders such as Cherise Taylor, as the other teams had to work hard to chase her down. Two of the back markers in the 36km event are worth a mention.
Possibly a father and daughter duo, the little girl received a friendly push from her more senior riding partner — dressed in orange — every so often and in this way the plucky pair looked certain to overcome some of the meaner sections of road in store.
Some visitors from beyond the Free State, especially the back markers trying to finish the 99km event, showed obvious surprise by some of the “mountains” they encountered at the tail end of this race. But it wasn’t all sweat and beers.
One lucky rider came away from the event with a Merida racing bike worth R22 000, given away in a lucky draw. If the spirit at the colourful water points festooned with balloons and the crowd gathered at the prize giving are anything to go by, much fun was enjoyed by all, including those who had simply supported the riders.
This article originally appeared in the Mail & Guardian newspaper as an advertorial supplement