THE RoadCover cycling team enjoyed an almost perfect ride to secure a convincing one-two-three finish at the aQuellé Tour Durban on Sunday.
Clint Hendricks led teammates Brendon Davids and Willie Smit across the finish line in a time of 2.19.17.
Dylan Girdlestone was in the initial break and pre-race favourite and Nolan Hoffman saw the danger and bridged across to complete the quintet near the top of the M7 climb.
Girdlestone and Hoffman did what they could to counter the moves, but after five or six blistering sprints from the RoadCover trio, the two outsiders could only watch when Davids and Hendricks went away as they crossed the Umdloti River on the way back to the Moses Mabhida Stadium.
“I was a bit uncertain about how I would feel because I had a big week last week but the plan was to ride for me if it came down to a bunch sprint,” said Hendricks.
“We could not have asked for anything better as a team today. We said at the team meeting we need to go right from the bottom of the climb and try to get a minute gap. We had 50 seconds at the top which we were happy with.”
The women’s race followed a similar format as a group of eight riders formed until the 40km to go mark.
PHOTO: Anthony Grote/Gameplan Media
Zanele Tshoko upped the pace and forced a break. She was followed closely by An-Li Kachelhoffer.
The pair settled down and worked together to the finish. Kachelhoffer took the win and was closely followed by Tshoko.
“Zanele had an awesome race and put me in the hurt box at about 60km and but got across to her and then we just rode to the finish together,” said Kachelhoffer.
In the 55km cyclocross event, Andrew Hill and Andrew Johnson fought for the win with Hill just getting ahead on the line.
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