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<\/a>Philip Buys and Matthys Beukes attack on the first major climb of the day. Photo credit: Em Gatland<\/span><\/p>\nFor the racing elite, Philip Buys and Matthys Beukes rested well at Clifton in Nottingham Road. Today, their fresh legs brought them home two seconds ahead of pre-race favourites, NAD Pro MTB with a time of 3:59:43. Further down the trail was the first of the Lanham-Love Mixed Category power couples, Candice and Darren Lill (dormakaba) with a time of 4:22:06.<\/p>\n
Buys and Beukes efforts on stage 6 saw the PYGA riders stay well ahead of NAD Pro MTB overall. The leading pair were fit and healthy on the day and saw no reason to try and extend their 12-and-a-half minute lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe took today as easy as possible. From now on there is some good climbing that suits us and we are looking forward to starting that,\u201d said Matthys Beukes.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the first climb today we raced with Nico and Gawie, and then we split up shortly after. But there are so many open roads in between, that it can split us up and bring us back together. In the last kilometres we started racing again and it got quite exciting!\u201d said Beukes.<\/p>\n
Buys had a stronger day on the 98km ride, saying, \u201cI feel a lot better today and it was some easy spinning. We didn\u2019t do much, [NAD Pro MTB] did a lot of work. Matthys activated the sprint, but I think NAD also deserved the stage win because they really have been great.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a proper recover day yesterday and the guys from PYGA sorted us out with proper beds so we could get a good night\u2019s rest. So we’re feeling good to look after this nice lead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bell and Combrinck are resilient riders, but today just wasn\u2019t meant to be for the NAD Pro MTB pair.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe gave it a go in terms of taking advantage of the climbs. That first hill Gawie went at it quite hard and the PYGA guys were drifting away and then they found their legs and caught us,\u201d said Bell.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they got to us I began to feel some strain so I took it easy and rode my own pace to the top, and then we all formed a group together with Road Cover and we just rolled on to the finish. There were some surges but no real attacks. We spent a lot of pennies chasing PYGA yesterday, so we didn\u2019t want to overspend today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feeling realistic but undefeated, Combrinck expects a difficult challenge for the remaining days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe gap is quite massive and tomorrow\u2019s 80km stage isn\u2019t really a day that you can make up time, but if you make a mistake you can lose a lot of time. It\u2019s a stage that suits PYGA better because it\u2019s very technical with lots of switchbacks. It\u2019s a short punchy route that is pretty fast. So I think it\u2019s going to be fun, but not a day that we can make up much time. Day 8 is the last day, so we have to gun it!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n