DCM's Venter Makes History For SA Cycling In "Baby"
Tour de France
Press Release : News Center
Jaco Venter (DCM) might be the next South African rider to compete in the Tour de France after his brilliant performance in the Tour de l'Aviner in France.
Venter finished 4th overall and was also 3rd in the individual time trial.
The Tour de l’Aviner is known as the Junior Tour de France or the Tour of the Future Stars. With one good performance a young rider can ensure that one of the ProTour teams will offer him a ProTour contract.
Venter’s coach said that Romain Sicard, who won the time trial, has already received an offer from the Spanish Euskaltel team. Tejay van Gaderen, who finished 2nd in the time trial, will ride for Team Columbia next year.
South Africa’s talented young riders should learn from Venter that there is no easy way to become a full-time European professional rider.
“Most of our young riders are spoiled. They all talk about one day riding the Tour de France or competing in Europe’s main one-day classics, but they are not prepared to make sacrifices to achieve their goal.
“They want to earn good salaries from day one and think that, by competing mostly in South African road races, they will make it big, but they are only fooling themselves.
“Jaco had to make a choice this year. He chose to do it the hard way. For most of the year he was based at the UCI Cycling Academy in Switzerland, which meant that he was not really earning a salary. But Jaco planned well ahead. He saved all the prize-money that he had won during the previous years, when he raced in South Africa, in order to survive in Europe.
“Another example of Jaco’s dedication to achieving success in Europe occurred at the South African Road Championship. Minutes after winning the SA u.23 time trial, he packed his bags and rushed to the airport to depart for Europe again.”
Other Results
Max Knox (DCM) won the Nelson’s Creek three-day Mountain Bike Challenge just outside Wellington. Jacques Rossouw was 2nd and Brandon Stewart 3rd.
The highlight of the tour was definitely the battle for supremacy between Knox and Rossouw.
The first stage finished with the two of them sprinting for the line, a contest in which Knox proved to be the stronger rider. The next day was a repetition, but this time Rossouw managed to be the first rider across the finishing line.
During the last stage, Knox and Stewart managed to get away in a break, with Stewart winning the stage.
This coming weekend
Stewart and Knox are going to compete in the Hill2Hill race in KwaZulu-Natal.
Stewart describes this race as the ‘Comrades’ of mountain biking, because it starts just outside World’s View in Hilton and finishes at Shongweni in Hillcrest.
The Hill2Hill is a race which Stewart dearly wants to win after having been 2nd three times. In the past two years he and Burry Stander (Specialized) were involved in titanic battles, with Stander winning each time.
This weekend Stander won’t be riding because he will be competing in a World Cup event. So it could be a classic scenario of ‘If the cat is away, the mice will come out to play’.
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