Henry Neethling hopes to achieve top results when he lines up with his Vandergroup team for their first Tour de Maurice in Mauritius on Monday.
The 20-year-old will be joined by Andries Nigrini, Bradley Potgieter, Tristan Cuthbert and Ruben van der Merwe for the six-day event that consists of a prologue, five road stages and an individual time-trial.
“My goal will be to get myself as high up in the best young rider classification as possible, get into a few breaks, try and go for a stage win and perhaps get king of the mountains points,” said Neethling.
Team Vandergroup’s Henry Neethling is aiming for top results when he competes in his debut Tour de Maurice next week. Photo: Rita Thienpondt
He added that being new to the tour he would try to animate the race, work to get a rider in the break on each stage and follow the bigger teams.
“We’ll also have a general classification rider, so we’ll try to protect the overall lead while we work for the KOM and best young rider jerseys.
“Bradley is a very good time-trial specialist, so we’ll protect him throughout to keep him as fresh as possible for that stage.”
The Johannesburg local, who has been riding for his team since the beginning of the year, said he had high expectations for them as they had been working hard and everyone was in good form.
“I’m a bit nervous about racing against teams from different countries, but I think we can just grow from the whole experience and learn a lot.
“I’m very excited to test out the legs in the mountains. I think we have a few very good climbers and I’m very positive for us. If we work together, we can try and get a top overall result.”
Neethling has just returned from a three-month block in Belgium where he rode for a federation team.
“It was very flat over there and the longest climb I did was about 50m. Going into this tour there will be quite a few mountain stages, so I’ve been training very hard the last three weeks and I’ll just go in and give my all, but being a climber it should suit me.”
He added that after the first two or three days they would see who was in the best position and form, and build the team around that rider.
“Ruben is in very good form at the moment after finishing strongly in the Lowveld Tour. Our captain Bradley is strong and is one to look out for on the flats and time-trial.
“Tristan might play a role in the short and fast prologue as he has an explosive kick. Andries is a strong climber who will try and go for the KOM. My role will be to follow breaks, try to get into attacks and go for stage wins.”
Neethling felt their biggest competition would come from the MCB and ProTouch teams, who had shown dominance in the tour.
“They’ve got quite a few good climbers, so if we can work strategically on the climbs we can try and be a bit more dominant.”
He added that the most important part would be to work together, see what the others’ strategies were and just give their best performance.
View a summary of the stages:
September 10: Prologue – 3.4km
September 11: Stage one – 134km
September 12: Stage two – 104.6km
September 13: Stage three – 144.8km
September 13: Stage four – 12.3km (individual time-trial)
September 14: Stage five – 81km
September 15: Stage six – 80.3km
