New winners for aQuellé Tour Durban

REYNARD Butler and Lise Olivier were crowned new champions of the aQuellé Tour Durban cycle race on Monday as locally based teams dominated the 105km road race that saw plenty of aggressive, fast racing in ideal warm and windless weather conditions.

Butler, who was installed as the heir apparent to triple champion Nolan Hoffman, was brought to the line perfectly by his Durban based Team Abantu team mates, and claimed his first ever classic title, on his debut ride in the Durban event.

Team Abantu managed their lead-in perfectly with Butler taking the win from teammate David Maree, with Under 23 star Thulasizwe Mxenge (InterActive) claiming the bronze medal ahead of Luthando Kaka (Bonitas) . Defending champion Nolan Hoffman finished in seventh while Team Bonitas’ danger man Herman Fouche ended ninth.

“It felt like a dream to me, crossing the line to win my first classic,” said Butler. “I had to work hard to be there through all the moves. If I hadn’t been there then it was going to come down to a bunch sprint for Nolan (Hoffman)”, he admitted afterwards.

The women’s race was tightly controlled by the newly formed team Time Freight VELOLife and by the time the race had turned in Pinetown there were only seven riders together, four of which were from the KZN team, with Jeannie Bomford, and Bestmed’s Monique Gerber trying to put on the pressure in a bid to wrestle control away from them.

Team Time Freight VELOLife worked together to set up the experienced Pretoria-based road star and team captain Lise Olivier to take the end sprint comfortably in the end.

“We tried to make it really hard on the first climb to Pinetown and we attacked there, but once we had gone over the top at Pinetown fortunately there were four of our team in the bunch of seven. Oliver said that she was exposed by her lack of knowledge of the course. “I went at the bottom of the climb to Pinetown but I totally underestimated what a long climb it was!”

Olivier paid tribute to the hard work done on the course by her team mates, many of whom are better known as mountain bikers or multi-sport athletes.

“Ashleigh Moffatt made it really hard with about ten kilometres to go, then Carla van Huyssteen went just before the last corners, then I was going to take the long sprint while Candice Neethling covered the short sprint, and it all worked out really well in the end,” said Olivier.

The 55km cyclo-cross race for Mountain Bike enthusiasts was won by former champion Andrew Hill (TIB Insurance). Hill streaked away alone at the front as soon as the race left the tar and hit the single track, and comfortably added the cyclo-cross scalp to the aQuellé Tour Durban MTB title he won several years ago, bringing his tally of wins at this event to four in five years.

All proceeds from the race are channelled into the Domino Foundation that supports the Amaoti community north of the city.