The teams will arrive in Pretoria on 29 June, two days before the road race starts. The tour will take place over three days and includes five different stages of road racing. The first stage takes place on the morning of 1 July and is an 80-100km road race. Stage two will take place that afternoon with a 20km individual time trial. On the second day (arguably one of the toughest days) is stage three, which will include a 140-150km road race. The final day will see stage four in the morning, a 4km individual hill climb around the Voortrekker Monument, and in the afternoon the LC de Villiers Sport campus will host the kermesse, where a track will be demarcated and riders will have to race around the track and complete a final sprint lap.
There will be both a men’s and women’s tour. TuksCycling has confirmed the teams which are as follows: the men’s team consists of Christiaan Mostert, Christoff Dames, Hein Badenhorst, Jacques Horn, Kevin Patten, Stephan Reyneke, Thomas Weeks and Viehann du Plessis. The women’s team consists of Andri Coetzee, Anja Renjsburger, Chrisel van der Merwe and Jessica Smith. “We’ve got some big shoes to fill,” says Jacques Horn, chairman of TuksCycling, after losing star rider Willie Smit to a career in professional cycling. Tuks men will now look to new team leader Kevin Patten, who is an ex-national champion, to try to gain the yellow leader’s jersey from the first stage and to keep Patten in yellow throughout the tour.
Perdeby spoke to Horn about the team’s upcoming USSA cycle tour.
How will this year’s tour be different to last year?
I think, firstly, we are going to be racing on home soil and we are defending champs. So it’s going to be interesting, it’s going to be a lot of extra pressure, since it’s here [UP], but I think it’s going to be a good route to race. It looks nice and it’s nice cycling out here, it’s better cycling out here than at the coast in winter because it’s not wet and raining. Other than that I think it’s going to be a hard race once again. The top riders from all the universities are going to be here and it’s going to be some good competition.
What have preparations been like for the tour?
The year started off really busy with most of our guys taking part in lots of racing because most of our guys ride for professional teams, so that was a good start for us. But the last month has quieted down quite a bit, which allows the guys to get their training in and be well prepared for the tour.
Which other teams are you most wary of?
Definitely NMMU, they have a lot of good riders as well as UJ. All the professional teams are actually based in Johannesburg so you can never rule anything out. Stellenbosch also have a lot of good riders so we’ll see how it goes.
How can aspiring cyclists get involved in TuksCycling?
You don’t have to be a particular rider to join TuksCycling. We welcome road and mountain bikers. We have social rides on the weekends when there are no semester tests, but for now there won’t be any because people are very busy with exams.
Image provided.
