{"id":19623,"date":"2015-07-18T15:10:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T14:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/2015\/07\/18\/smit-retains-yellow-jersey-in-jock-tour-r3089\/"},"modified":"2023-02-08T14:20:50","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T14:20:50","slug":"smit-retains-yellow-jersey-in-jock-tour-r3089","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/smit-retains-yellow-jersey-in-jock-tour-r3089\/","title":{"rendered":"Smit retains yellow jersey in Jock Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overnight leader Willie Smit retained the yellow jersey after finishing third in the 140km second stage of the inaugural Bestmed Jock Tour, presented by ASG, in Nelspruit on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Smit led out EuropcarSA teammate Ryan Gibbons in the final sprint at the Mbombela Stadium in the Mpumalanga capital to help him collect the stage victory in 4:00:46 ahead of Bonitas fastman Herman Fouch\u00e9.<\/p>\n

The overall podium remained unchanged with the former national student champion topping the general classification in 4:58:16, followed by local rider Nico Bell of RECM (4:59:08) and Stefan de Bod of MTN-Qhubeka (4:59:35).<\/p>\n

\n\"ccs-62657-0-39721800-1437232706.jpg\"<\/a>The overnight leader of the Bestmed Jock Tour, Willie Smit, kept the yellow jersey after finishing third on the 140km second stage in Mpumalanga on Saturday. Photo: Hendrik Wagener<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

After the tough opening day individual time-trial, the first of the road stages took riders on a gruelling circuit via White River and Sabie that featured a vertical ascent of 2 900m.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t really under pressure the whole day, except on Long Tom Pass when I had to cover quite a few moves,\u201d said Smit.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy teammates helped me get back to the finish and I wanted to help Ryan in the lead-out, which is the least I could do for all the work he\u2019s done for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The performance of the day however belonged to Altech-Autopage\u2019s Pieter Seyffert, who made a bold solo move after the neutral zone and extended his advantage to more than four minutes over the next 80km.<\/p>\n

Seyffert took the first two sprint primes and the king of the mountains hotspots on Spitskop and Long Tom Pass before the chasing dozen finally reeled him in at the 90km mark.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually didn\u2019t want to go away by myself,\u201d said Seyffert. \u201cIt was unbelievably hard up front.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said his intention had not been to stay away all day as another hard route awaited on the third and final stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least I walk away with the king of the mountains jersey, so it wasn\u2019t all in vain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gibbons took the final hotspot at 126km to earn the points jersey, while De Bod leads the best young rider category.<\/p>\n

Smit, who leads by 52 seconds, said the 132km final stage would be just as challenging as he expected strong tactical racing from the elite peloton in a bid to carve away at the deficit.<\/p>\n

\u201cTomorrow\u2019s quite a big day, but I don\u2019t think Boulders is the climb to be scared of.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the 50km stretch to Barberton and then the Hilltop ascent just before the finish that will make the difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cNelspruit has one of the hardest cycling terrains in South Africa. The route is undulating and you can easily blow completely on a long climb and lose minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The third stage, which features 3 100m of vertical climbing, covers the traditional one-day Jock Classique route from Nelspruit to Kaapmuiden and Barberton before finishing back in Nelspruit.<\/p>\n

Follow the tour on @jockcycle<\/a>, Facebook or www.thejock.co.za<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Overnight leader Willie Smit retained the yellow jersey after finishing third in the 140km second stage of the inaugural Bestmed Jock Tour, presented by ASG, in Nelspruit on Saturday. Smit led out EuropcarSA teammate Ryan Gibbons in the final sprint at the Mbombela Stadium in the Mpumalanga capital to help him collect the stage victory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":56581,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[960,961,396],"featured_location":[],"class_list":["post-19623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","tag-bestmed-jock-tour","tag-jock-tour","tag-willie-smit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19623"},{"taxonomy":"featured_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikehub.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/featured_location?post=19623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}