PYGA Euro Steel and Motorlease Perigon secure sani2c titles

News24
17 May 2021, 17:13 GMT+10

PYGA Euro Steel's Matthys Beukes and Gert Heyns and Motorlease Perigon's Robyn de Groot and Amy McDougall are the 2021 sani2c champions.

A split second men's finish saw PYGA Euro Steel's second team of Philip Buys and Pieter du Toit take the stage win on Sunday, but with the nearly four minute gap held by the first PYGA Euro Steel team, the sprint finish was not going to take away their victory.

In the women's race, a crash for Motorlease Perigon's Amy McDougall saw to it that the Galileo Risk Infiniti SPOT team of Theresa Ralph and Kim le Court could take the stage win, but the two previous days of powerful riding from Motorlease Perigon secured them the title.

The final stage of the three day mountain bike stage race started at Jolivet Farm and took riders through sugar cane farms, coastal forest and Vernon Crookes Game Reserve, before arriving at Scottburgh beach via the Hansgrohe floating bridge across the lagoon. The finish is a further 2kms to Scottburgh Golf Club.

The pace was fast and furious from the start with the top seven teams together for the first half of the race. DSV Pro Cycling and Absolute Motion dropped off the pace and at the 39 km mark at Vernon Crookes, the five teams of PYGA Euro Steel 1 and 2, Imbuko Giant, TypeDev NanoTime and Insect Science were left to fight it out.

The young Imbuko Giant pair challenged the PYGA Euro Steel first team in the front multiple times, with Marco Joubert surging to the front at the 46km mark. The front position then switched countless times between riders and the pace was relentless.

"It's been such a good weekend of racing, it feels like some sort of normality has returned to racing. We rode in the front to try and stay out of trouble, it was a solid day and plain sailing," Beukes said.

"Everyone was fast with peaking after Marathon Champs, so this was definitely one of the harder races to win. sani2c is one of the best stage races in the country so a good one to have for the CV," added Heyns.

Motorlease Perigon securing overall victory

Motorlease Perigon's overall victory was never in serious jeopardy despite McDougall's crash at about the 10km mark, which lost them significant time. At the 23km mark there was an eight minute gap between first and second, but the powerful duo of De Groot and McDougall pulled their way back to less than two minutes behind at the finish of the final stage. Their time for the final stage was 03:10:57, while Galileo Risk Infiniti SPOT's Ralph and Le Court finished the stage in 03:09:43.

"We were grateful for the buffer today, you can never count your chickens before they hatch in stage racing," said McDougall.

"Amy and I have a nice rhythm and we understand each other. We both knew there was work to be done to regain our losses, so we just put our heads down and each played our part," added De Groot.

Danielle Strydom and Janice Venter were third across the line (03:43:20), over 30 minutes after the Motorlease pair, maintaining their third spot on the podium.

GENERAL CLASSIFICATION RESULTS

Men

1 PYGA Euro Steel 1 (Matthys Beukes/Gert Heyns) 08:55:16

2 PYGA Euro Steel 2 (Pieter du Toit/Philip Buys) 08:58:21

3 TypeDev Nanotime (Matt Beers/Wessel Botha) 09:01:14

4 Imbuko Giant Pro Team (Marco Joubert/Rudi Koen) 09:05:00

5 Absolute Motion Men (Henry Liebenberg/Brendan van Eeden) 09:30:15

Women

1 Motorlease Perigon (Amy McDougall/Robyn de Groot) 10:40:41

2 Galileo Risk Infiniti SPOT (Theresa Ralph/Kim le Court) 11.01.39

3 Insect Science (Danielle Strydom/Janice Venter ) 12:22:48

Mixed teams