Win at sani2c for Ixopo’s Michael Foster
Along with Jadeon Terlouw, the pair took the third and final stage of the 20th edition of the race in a time of 02:54:45.
The KAP sani2c mountain bike stage race came to an exciting end in Scottburgh last Saturday after three days that covered 265km of trails, starting in the Underberg area.
Michael Foster and Jaedon Terlouw (PYGA Euro Steel 2) are this year’s champions. The pair took the third and final stage of the 20th edition KAP sani2c in a time of 02:54:45, after a sprint finish with the Insect Science team of Arno du Toit and Keagan Bontekoning in 02:54:50.
Du Toit and Bontekoning went all in on Saturday’s stage as they had over four minutes to make up to have any hope of securing the title, but were unable to get a gap on the PYGA Euro Steel team, who showed their strength from Prologue to finish.
Foster surged to the finish line, neck-and-neck with Arno du Toit. Terlouw crossed just seconds ahead of Bontekoning to seal the stage and overall win.
Foster, who is from Ixopo and grew up volunteering at the sani2c, was thrilled to stand on the top step of the podium.
“It is quite incredible. I did not think it would happen this year. The day was quite hard, though we could not get away from the guys [Insect Science], especially in the mud. They were trying to push on the descents which were quite sketchy.”
Arno du Toit said: “We didn’t come here for a stage win, we had four and a half minutes to make up. We went out guns blazing and thought the conditions might play in our favour, so we were pushing hard to force mistakes, but they didn’t come. They had the horsepower, they even had us under pressure on the early steeper climbs, so we realised it was going to come down to a sprint finish. We tried to keep it fun and had a jol out there. It was lekker racing.”
In the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) women’s race, Sam Sanders and Danielle Strydom (Efficient Infiniti Insure) put in a dominant performance to make it a clean sweep of the stages and to take the overall win (02:54:45/11:55:39).
While there was little threat of the Efficient Infiniti Insure team losing their top spot, Strydom says there was definitely some racing.
“The other women’s teams kept the heat up. The mud added an element, Sam and I both had a puddle fall, but despite that the trails were immaculate and it was really fun riding,” said Strydom.
Sanders added that it was super cool to win all three stages and the Prologue.
“We kept our heads cool and calm, stuck to our strategy and kept it safe,” she said.
Strydom says they will be competing at Gravel Champs and then SA Marathon Champs.
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