ProTouch Africa team take on Panama
Crashes occurred from the gun, with the race even being stopped in the neutral zone, but after a short delay, the race was under way once again.
In the past month during a tour in Turkey ProTouch Continental Cycling met up with the Panama National Team and talked about ways to provide younger riders access to more international racing opportunities.
ProTouch announced the ProTouch Africa Club Team led by Nolan Hoffman from team ENZA Construction that will be participating in the Tour of Panama from August 24 to 29.
Despite setbacks leading to stage one, the young team consisting of Nolan Hoffman, Titus Juries, Justin Chesterton, Pedri Crause, Sean Wait, Jonathan Bouwer, Siyanda Gumede and Jason Bruintjies, started on a high, and one could not help feeling the excitement brewing as they took on the very first international stage race.
Pedri finished off in a magnificent third place in the Junior Category (38th overall) and Justin in 18th, while Jason finished off in 43rd.
In the U/23 category Siyanda finished off in 46th position, followed by Jonathan who suffered a minor crash (but still finished) and Sean.
Stage 2 of the Tour of Panama saw the young riders cycling to the start, not far from their quarantine barracks 137.80km from Pedasi to Parita and the longest stage of the Tour, which proved to be an absolute eye-opener for everyone.
Crashes occurred from the gun, with the race even being stopped in the neutral zone, but after a short delay, the race was under way once again.
The instruction of staying away from the back, as that’s where the crashes usually occur, didn’t take long to manifest itself.
With a peloton of over 200 riders and at least 30 following vehicles of all shapes and sizes, it would be a day of absolute confusion and carnage.
The crashes seemed to occur on a regular basis and whilst a number of ProTouch Africa Club Team riders got caught up, they all managed to come away unscathed.
Another touch of wheels caused mayhem once again and Sean found himself getting up off the tarmac, but with some hard words of encouragement he remounted and kept going to the finish.
The extreme temperatures, hard, fast roads, and all other setbacks of the week disappeared out of the team’s memories after the day’s baptism of fire.
