Team Telkom target Tour Durban triumph
Three time race winner Nolan Hoffman aims for the top step of the popular Tour Durban 105km event podium on Sunday, 24 April.
TEAM Telkom Pro Cycling are relishing a trip to KwaZulu-Natal’s East Coast for the 2016 aQuellé Tour Durban as they look to return either three time race winner Nolan Hoffman or 2014 champion Reynard Butler to the top step of the popular 105km event’s podium on Sunday, 24 April.
Hoffman and Butler will be joined in Telkom’s five-man-strong, title pursuing line-up by team mates David Maree, Morné van Niekerk and Aidan van Niekerk and the Tour Durban is an assignment Hoffman is looking forward to being a part of once more.
“It’s obviously a new team for us but we still have the same goal! After having missed out in 2015, we’re hungry to get the title back! The Tour Durban has always been a race I really enjoy, one of the bigger races for me personally and is now also one of our team’s bigger events of the first half of the year,” said Hoffman.
Having claimed a historic hat-trick at the Tour Durban between 2011 and 2013, ‘The Hoff’ fell agonisingly short of completing a triple triumph at the Cape Town Cycle Tour this past weekend, proving both he and his team mates remain in fine form.
“Each year presents different tests and I still enjoy the whole challenge of training and preparing for races and then measuring the success of that by my results at races like the Tour Durban. I’m feeling good at the moment but the nice thing about Reynard (Butler) having matured in the big way that he has, is that now he is just as fast as me. He is now able to take the pressure off me and I can do the same for him so it’s great to go into big races with two cards to play!” explains Hoffman.
The 2016 aQuellé Tour Durban takes place on Sunday, 24 April and offers 105km or 45km Road Race and 55km Cyclocross event options.
Normal entries can be submitted online at www.cycleevents.co.za/road-events/aquelle-tour-durban-2016/ and until 10pm on 11 April, after which late entries will be taken at registration at Suncoast Casino & Entertainment World from 10am to 5pm on Friday, 22 and Saturday, 23 April.
