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<\/a>Photo Credit: ZC Marketing Consulting.<\/span><\/p>\nSouth African Gert Heyns (SCOTT LCB Factory Racing) used his descending skills to close down and join the leaders. Making a big effort to also bridge the gap was Waylon Woolcock (USN Purefit) and the Team NAD duo of Nico Bell and South African marathon champion, Gawie Combrinck. Not far behind them were Darren Lill (USN Purefit) and HB Kruger (Team Telkom).<\/p>\n
But Fluckiger was in no mood for consolidation and as soon as the group reached the next steep climb, he attacked. Rohrbach responded and Stiebjahn tried too, but the pace was relentless and the pitched gradients, loose surfaces and challenging sections of singletrack suited the two Swiss racers, both of whom are XCO specialists. They surged ahead to secure the first two podium spots.<\/p>\n
Fluckiger, currently ranked 11th on the UCI World Rankings, clocked a winning time of 4h22m31s, while Rohrbach rolled home in 4h25m36s with a flat tyre. Bell finished strongly to force Stiebjahn into a sprint for the bronze medal spot, the German just nailing it, with Heyns rounding out the top five.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really tough but I\u2019m super happy with the win. Having events like these to prepare with is great, you never get to push quite that hard in training. It was perfect conditions for training and conditioning in an Olympic year,” said a delighted Fluckiger.<\/p>\n
\u201cLukas (Fluckiger) and I are here in Stellenbosch for a training camp and we decided at the last minute to come do this event. It is great to race in these conditions to acclimatise before the Cape Epic,\u201d said Rohrbach.<\/p>\n
In the women\u2019s race, over the shorter 70km distance, there were two sprint finishes, the first between Suss and Jennie Stenerhag (Ascendis Health) for the gold and the second between Ariane Kleinhans (Team Spur) and Robyn de Groot (Asendis Health) for the bronze.<\/p>\n
It was the second year in succession that Suss, the current Swiss marathon champion, has won the Meerendal round of the Ashburton Investments National Series and she dedicated the win to Herman Coertse, the owner of Meerendal and one of her sponsors.<\/p>\n
The performance by Stenerhag, the Swedish marathon champion, was impressive, forcing Suss, the 2010 marathon world champion, into a race-long fight for the win and confirming her good early-season form.<\/p>\n