The tour has been going great so far. We have Louis [Meintjes] and Tsgabu [Grmay] well up on GC so have some cards to play. The racing style is way different to what I experienced in Belgium. There are only 5 riders per team which means its hard to control the race. The race is chaotic from start to finish. The race is one non stop attack war zone from the start to the line. As soon as a smallish group gets a gap they stop working together which means they slow down and that again gives riders from the peloton the opportunity to jump across. Also, as soon as these guys see a yellow rider jumping up the road the whole peloton will chase and close it. Its tough to find the right combination of riders to actually form a breakaway.
Today we rode aggressively again. Jacques went into the first move up the first climb and for the first time this tour, the peloton let them have 3mins. But then they panicked and chased it down immediately as the time gap grew. Close to the finale with 30km odd to go I tried to ride away. Again a good group formed but there’s always one or two riders who don’t roll with us and that demotivated everyone and yet again we got caught. We had a good leadout train ready for Louis and Tsgabu for the finishing climb but 3km to go a sharp right hand corner ruined the plan as myself and more riders overshot it and had to go turn in the traffic. Non of us went down but Louis and Tsgabu lost a lot of positions which cost effort to make up.
Tomorrow we have some climbs but non of these climbs are pure climbers mountains for Louis or Tsgabu. We will watch the early moves early on and see what we can do on the climbs!
Its been a great experience racing in Asia. New country, new food, new racing style. Love it. Its tough getting into the new time zone as we are 6 hours ahead of South Africa but everyday we find it easier.
Johann van Zyl
