Gert Heyns and Arno du Toit won the Liberty Winelands Encounter mountain-bike race by taking the third and final stage, which finished near Paarl today.
The 147km event in the Cape Winelands, presented by STANLIB, finished with a 50km route from Le Franschhoek Hotel to the Nederburg Wine Estate.
Arno du Toit (left) and Gert Heyns cross the finish line at Nederburg Wine Estate near Paarl on the 50km final stage of the Liberty Winelands Encounter mountain-bike race, presented by STANLIB, to win the overall honours today. Picture: Robert Ward
The DSV Pro Cycling team, who had a lead of just less than two minutes overnight, took control after HB Kruger had a tumble and was unable to complete the stage.
Kruger and Matt Beers, riding for ASG-NAD, were hoping to make up the leeway in the final stage before the accident happened 25km into the stage.
Coming into a single-track section, Kruger’s front wheel get stuck in some soft sand and he went over the handle-bars.
“I damaged my right shoulder quite badly and we had to get help, so unfortunately were not able to finish the stage,” he said.
The outcome was that it left the Imbuko-Momsen team of Dylan Rebello and Marco Joubert, third overnight, to chase the overall leaders, but they were not able to close the gap.
Winning the stage in 1:55:01, Heyns from Stellenbosch and Du Toit of Milnerton in Cape Town produced an overall time of 5:29:29, ahead of Rebello and Joubert.
Richard Simpson and Alexander Rohrer, of First Ascent, finished third on the day, as well as overall.
Heyns said they were in the front, just ahead of Kruger and Beers, when the accident happened.
“We were just going into a single-track section when I heard something behind us, which turned out to be HB falling,” he said.
“Soon afterwards we realised HB and Matt weren’t with us and we later saw Dylan and Marco chasing us, so we assumed what had happened.”
Having built up a lead, he said they were able to maintain that until the end, completing a memorable weekend.
“This was definitely a good win for us, especially as we will be riding the sani2C next month,” said Heyns.
“It was very special and our partnership worked well after doing the Cape Epic with each other a few years ago.”
In the mixed category, Samantha Sanders of Nelspruit and Stellenbosch-based Matthew Stamatis, of Home Ice Cream-dormakaba, completed a clean sweep of the stages to take the general classification in 6:10:16.
They were followed overall by David George and Katie Lennard (The Gear Change) eight minutes behind, with Carmen Buchacher and Paris Basson (dormakaba) third.
Having only been a late entry, Sanders said she was delighted with the win in her first Winelands appearance.
“We went into the race with the intention of doing well and I had a good knowledge of the trails,” she said.
“We got off to a good lead on the first day and were able to ride consistently from there on.”
The women’s category went to Louise Ferreira and Marleen Lourens, who also led from the first stage.
They completed the final leg in 2:22:39 for an overall time of 6:58:59.
Ilse Viljoen and Jana Kruger took second place overall and Alta Kriegler and Sunette Beyers (Pool Nurse) were third.
