Sungardens Carousel Classic 2009
We kicked of the second part of the season at the Sungardens Carousel Classic north of Pretoria. It was a great opportunity for all cyclists to test their level of fitness after the cold winter months. For everyone else it was a public holiday, celebrating Woman’s day.
The Elite men were the only category allowed to participate in the 150km event, while the rest could decide between the 110km or 40km event.
Four ladies teams were present at the race (6 girls from Cycle Lab, 7 girls from MTN, 2 from Nashua and me riding for Konica Minolta). Unfortunately Cycle Lab’s girls decided to ride with the Veteran men, reducing the field to only three teams and a few individual riders.
The ladies race (110km) started around 7:30am. It was a typical cold winter morning, but luckily it warmed up soon after we left the start line. The flat race route was made very treacherous by huge potholes in the middle of the road and traffic passing the riders regularly from both directions.
Early into the race MTN started launching attacks one after the other. They had the numbers and dominated the race completely. Roben de Groot and I tried hard to make our presence felt but MTN just had too many riders. Once hey had 3 girls in the break the rest of the team just covered all the counter attacks and kept the bunch together.
The only counter attack that stayed away consisted of Roben de Groot, Altie Clark and me with Chrissie Viljoen sitting on as a ‘policeman’ for MTN. We rode hard in an attempt to catch the 3 leaders, Marissa van der Merwe, Cashandra Slingerland and Carla Swart – all MTN. Our disorganized chase wasn’t making an impact on the MTN team time trial and to rub salt into our wounds Chrissie sprinted us all at the finish line after sitting on the whole way.
It wasn’t a great day, but I was happy to reach the finish in one piece. Let’s hope next week’s racing at the Tour de Soweto is a bit more positive and not just all about tactics.
Race Results:
1st Carla Swart (MTN)
2nd Cashandra Slingerland (MTN)
3rd Marissa vd Merwe (MTN)
4th Chrissie Viljoen (MTN)
5th Altie Clark (Nashua)
6th Roben de Groot (Nashua)
7th Yolandi du Toit (Konica Minolta)