On the 3rd of September, our rider Jaco Van Dyk and team manager and owner Marcelo Coelho made their way down to the famous Franschhoek Valley for the annual Race 2 the Sea. Excitement was in the air as this was going to be the first ever UCI Gravel National Championships.
The racing was off fast and hard as Matt Beers put all the riders in the hurt locker. Shortly into the race a breakaway of three riders had formed, with Matt Beers from Specialised Toyota, Marc Pritzen from Team Honeycomb and our very own Jaco Van Dyk. A comfortable pace was set and the three riders began rolling, however not long after the breakaway soon increased to 9 riders.
This breakaway soon reached a highly technical area of the race and Matt took this as an opportunity to go hard. Only riders Jaco and Marc were able to follow this move. The race started to settle only to see Marc stuck with a flat tire, leaving Jaco and Matt as the sole survivors of the breakaway.
It seemed that the curse of the flat wheels was not done as our rider, Jaco, was hit with one. He managed to make it the the feed zone still holding on to second place but at least 3 minutes behind Matt. At this point, a tire pump and some wheel plugs would have to do.
After leaving the feed zone, Jaco had to stop multiple more times putting a dash to our winning hopes. He managed to finish within the top 20 but not in any position that we were hoping for. Technical issues are all a part of the cycling game and we will take this race as a learning experience and see the room for improvement.
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